


sweet metal taste

by werebird



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Asphyxiation, Bad Sex, Begging, Blow Jobs, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Bucky Barnes's Trigger Words, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Canon-Typical Violence, Cock Warming, Comeplay, Dubious Consent, Everyone Has Issues, Everything Hurts, Explicit Sexual Content, Fucked Up, Hand & Finger Kink, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Objectification, On the Run, Oral Fixation, POV Third Person, Paranoia, Possessive Behavior, Rape Fantasy, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Sort Of, Spit As Lube, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Vomiting, Wetting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-03-28 08:18:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 47,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13900029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/werebird/pseuds/werebird
Summary: "Is this how it's going to be?" Steve asks. Asks Bucky as much as himself. As much as the entire godforsaken universe."Yeah," Bucky just says. He pulls back until he can face him. Reaches to hold Steve's face in both his hands. "We already went from 'dying from it' to 'living with it'. That's more than most people get."--Steve and Bucky are on the run.--





	1. Chapter 1

The asset.  
The asset, the asset, the asset.

It's the only thought in Steve's head as he watches an exhausted and worn out Bucky sleep on the crappy motel bed. Watches the asset sleep.

Bucky's metal arm twitches every now and then. During their first few nights on the run, every single movement of the arm had Bucky jolting upright, reaching for a gun between his shoulder blades that wasn't there anymore. Now they carry their guns hidden away under their clothes, in the waistbands of their underwear or strapped to their flanks.

The metal arm was dysfunctional. But what were they going to do? Just cut off Buck's arm? Once again? If they could have even found anything that was nearly equipped to function as a surgical tool for a hyper-complex biotic prosthetic. For a state of the art war machine. Or have Steve rip it off? With his bare hands and his Captain America strength? Risking to rip out a couple of ribs while he was at it? Bucky’s sternum? Bucky’s heart?

So they had to deal with the arm for now. They had to make peace with it. But neither of them had. For days, Steve worried that the arm made them trackable. No matter how often Bucky had assured him that it didn't work like that. And that even if it did, he was sure it wasn't capable of sending out any long ranging signal in the state it was in.

It was a pitiful mess compared to the weapon it was designed to be. And not just in Steve's eyes. They had tried to avoid people whenever they could, but sometimes the safest place to be undercover was in a crowd. And then Steve had started noticing the looks whenever Buck's arm was suddenly jerking out of nowhere. When Bucky had to hold onto it with his right hand. Or Steve with his stronger grip.

That's how the hand holding began. Bucky's left and Steve's right. Metal on skin. Or rather, metal in leather on skin. They weren't stupid enough not to cover it with a glove.  
It was a malfunctioning useless thing. Technically, it wasn't even Bucky's. It was HYDRA's. It was the asset's.

But Steve's heart didn't know that. It still hammers whenever he's allowed to hold on to it. To touch Bucky like that. Prompted by a desperate look of his. A quick glance. Help me, it said. I need your help. But Bucky never actually said it out loud.

It's why Steve wants to keep the arm. It's why Steve had been shouting and losing it that one time he had discovered Bucky trying to rip it off himself. Wet from the running shower. Blood running down his arm and chest from where he had tried to dig his fingers in between metal and flesh. A gashing wound emptying itself on his shoulder.

"Are you out of your mind?" Steve had yelled. Had cornered Bucky with his supernatural strength. His hand going for Buck's throat. He hadn't been himself. Maybe for a moment there, in his panic, he was going to kill him, scrambling just so he could keep the arm. The only hand he was allowed to hold.

James Buchanan Barnes was trained by Captain America though, he didn't even need the Winter Soldier to put Steve in his place. His Steve. He didn't even need the arm.  
Not even seven decades, eight, nine, could erase the muscle memories of his leaner self, every bone in his body going soft to adjust Bucky's stance.

So they only stood there, under the water spray.  
Like idiots.  
Like lovers.

And when Steve looked up at the rusty shower head, he remembered. Rusted.  
And it itched him to say it out loud. Itched on his tongue and in his throat. Longing, rusted, seventeen. Daybreak.

He didn’t know why. He wanted to punish Bucky. His desperation wanted to punish Bucky. His loneliness wanted to punish Bucky. Threaten him. Make him ready to comply. Comply, soldier. Comply.

He just isn't himself anymore. He’s not made to be on the road. On the run. To constantly watch his back and lie.

It was him though who had made them run. It was his selfishness that wasn't going to hand over Bucky. That is not ever going to give him up. Not ever going to let him be hurt again. Not by anyone. Not by his own hand.

The first problem is, you cannot stitch skin to metal with a needle from a sewing kit you stole at some hotel.

"It'll heal," Bucky had said, but that just wasn't enough for Steve. He was going to forbid Bucky from staying alone in the room. From locking the bathroom door for his showers. From closing it even.

The second problem is, you cannot just pour antiseptics over malfunctioning electronics. Or in their case, Russian vodka. Not where they once were connected to nerve ends and veins. You cannot risk the damage. You cannot risk the rusting. The rusted arm. Longing, rusted, seventeen. Daybreak.

"It'll heal," Bucky had said again and Steve bit his lips to keep from crying. How? How will it heal? He screamed at Bucky in his head. How will it heal with the dirt under your fingernails, the dust of the mattress and the rusty water? The rusted water.

But he didn’t say a word.

Steve then did the only thing he could think of. He made him bleed again, nudging the skin apart from the metal with shaking fingers. Made him bleed it all out. All of the rusted water. And then he taped shoulder to arm, metal to skin, in order to minimize the wound. To help Bucky's body heal.

The third problem, however, is that bodies just don't attach themselves to metal naturally. And Bucky's body was simply refusing to rebuild the connection. So as the wound healed, it left a cleft between muscles and bionics. Left a dip in Bucky's muscle and an edge of metal next to it. Almost riff-like and anything but smooth. Whenever Bucky would toss and turn in his sleep, he’d sometimes cut himself. On his human arm or the soft flesh between chest and shoulder, right under his collarbone. He would leave blood stains on the sheets. Smudged and dried in the morning. The color of rust, too.  
And yet, Steve wanted to keep the arm.  
He wants to keep it right now as he watches Bucky sleep. Watches the asset sleep.

Steve can’t sleep. Although he should get some rest. He should let his eyes rest, and his mind. But his eyes want Bucky as much as his hands want him.

Buck’s been sleeping a lot since they’re on the run. He says he’s still adjusting to not being kept in stasis in between missions. He says it’s difficult to be efficient, if you have to be efficient every single day. And Steve can relate to that.

Besides, maybe he doesn’t mind. It’s just a different way for him to rediscover his friend without struggling through awkward silences. Or those painful conversations about the past.  About who they used to be.

Instead, he can start with the shape of Bucky’s body. His jaw, his shoulders and his hips. And then only later in the night, in the darkness, when he can’t quite make it out, remember Bucky’s face. Bucky’s face. Not the soldier’s face. Remember happiness. Carelessness. Cockiness. Not hardened pain and conditioned determination.

Oh, how he loved that face. How he loves the memory of it.

He doesn’t blame Bucky for changing, though. He can barely recognize his own face since they’ve left Washington. He himself has become hardened pain.

Maybe that’s why they haven’t found them yet.

Every thirty minutes, Steve gets up from his spot to take a look out the small window by the door. Rarely, he even steps outside, breathing in the night.

They’ll come sooner or later. He knows they haven’t stopped looking. But he’ll go as far with Bucky as he has to. He will never let him leave his side. Not again. Not ever.

Bucky stirs when Steve moves, his hair on the pillow, his wrist halfway under it, the metal shimmering in the dark.

Not an invitation, Steve reminds himself, and then in a surge of panic, looks frantically for the light source that reflects on Bucky’s arm. There shouldn’t be one, he knows. It’s dark and only dark. They don’t pick motels that look inviting. Motels that look lived in. They pick the empty ones. The dark ones only. The dead ones. The ones they don’t have to pay for.

They only stay in hotels when their dumb luck allows them to go unnoticed. Bucky found a key card once. They didn’t stay long. Just enough to raid the room, steal some clothes and the contents of the minibar. A few towels and a duffle bag.

Yes, Captain America is a thief now.

He peeks through the window again. Looking for a moon, searching for an abandoned street light they’d overlooked as they’d checked the area earlier that day. But nothing.

And as he looks back to the bed, Bucky’s arm is nothing more than a black shape, he can’t make out anymore.

An imagination? Hallucination? Sleep deprivation?

“Buck,” he breathes. He can’t risk it. “Buck,” he whispers again, feeling his way across the room for the bed. The moment he puts his hand on Buck’s body, somewhere on his torso, Steve guesses, no hair under his palm, not the dip of his belly button under his fingers, Bucky’s hand snaps into a death grip around Steve’s wrist. His right hand. The functioning hand.

“Shut up,” Steve hisses, his throat feeling the strain of his lowered voice. It’s not like Bucky had said a word, but he needs him to stay quiet at all cost. “They’re coming,” he adds.

There’s a moment of nothing. Of only darkness and silence. And the lack of Bucky’s touch on Steve’s wrist. And then suddenly, Bucky is right next to him. Steve can feel his body heat like a beacon in the night. A lighthouse in the storm. And then Buck’s by the window and Steve can hear the safety pin of a gun and the click of the door. And then he breathes in night again, in their room, as Bucky steps outside.

Steve holds his breath. He can’t find an explanation for why he’s not at Bucky’s side. No other than the warm sheets under the palm of his hand.

“Move,” Bucky says quietly. He’s back inside now. Then the door closes, barely a sound. Bucky’s voice is tender and soft and Steve moves although he doesn’t know where to. He gets up. He takes a step towards his voice. “Out the back,” Bucky tells him. Not a whisper, but nothing more than a breath.

They climb out the small window in the bathroom. One after the other. Steve first, then Bucky. They would never choose a room without a second exit.

There are stars in the sky, but no moon. It’s why they chose tonight. No chance of cornering them like that on a different day of the month. Not with full vision.

Bucky’s there again, next to him. His lighthouse. And when Bucky holds out his metal arm, brushing Steve between hip bone and mid thigh, Steve takes his hand. Holds it. Holds the left for a steady right. For a steady shot.

They move like one body. Making no more sound than the wind in the trees and the animals in the woods. Steve’s nervous. But there’s more. Excitement. Arousal even? They’ve been to war. But there was fear in war. This isn’t war. This time, they are the bad guys.

It’s the arousal of the school boy who, by watching the bad kid, had just discovered that rules can be broken. Though, he does not understand how. And beneath it, the ever lingering question: Do I want to be him? Or do I want to be with him?

The metal hand was cold at first, but it warms to Steve’s touch. Does Bucky know? Does it work like that? And if yes, does it still work like that? Can Bucky’s bionic arm tell the heat of a flame or the sweat on Steve’s fingertips?

Steve holds on a little tighter. More firm. Not saying ‘this is what we do’ anymore, but 'this is what’s mine’. And Bucky’s breath hitches.

They must be able to see them. They must have night vision. They could be Tony or Clint. They could be HYDRA. And both of them could be dead before they could hear the gunshot or the glide of an arrow through the air. At least one of them would.

Take me first, Steve thinks. Wills it into everyone’s head. Everyone who may be lurking in the dark. Let him get away. Let Bucky get away.

When it comes, he hears only his own cry. And then the slap of his own hand against his mouth. Violently shaking. His chest cramps under a closed throat, forcing breaths through it. Grunts. Sobs.

His head aches, too small for the amount of fear. Too small for the thought of having lost him again. Maybe this is war after all. It takes second after second after second before his other hand is allowed to talk. ‘Bucky’s not down’, it yells, ‘Sergeant Barnes is not down’. But Steve’s brain is primal like that. It’s all instinct when it comes to Bucky. His brain, for better or worse, is all heart when it comes to Bucky.

But Bucky lives. Although it takes a while for Steve to realize. It was Bucky who shot. It was the ghost. It was the assassin.

Nothing follows. Although if not for Bucky’s shot, it was Steve’s cry that gave away their location. Are they alone? Were they alone all along?

Then Bucky steps right in front of him. Puts his forehead against Steve’s temple and starts talking against his cheek. Like they did during the war. When bombs and explosions had left them with nothing but painfully ringing ears. When words were survival but listening was impossible. “Move,” Bucky says. “Go. I’ll find you. I’ll look for the body.”

Steve shakes his head. He’s not going anywhere. Instead, he tightens his grip on Bucky’s hand who must be able to tell. He must know, Steve tells himself. Side by side. Like he had promised. He pulls Bucky closer, the bridge of his nose painfully pressed against Steve’s cheekbone.

“Don’t you dare fight me now,” Steve tells him, putting his free hand on Buck’s shoulder.

“I remember our fights,” Bucky says, his breath hot against Steve’s face. His mouth hot against Steve’s face. His lips only a head tilt away.

Their fights. They’ve been nothing but banter. Nothing but just another excuse for contact. Another excuse to say 'I love you’ in their 'I worry about you’s. In their 'don’t be stupid’s. Which were nothing else than saying 'Don’t be stupid without me’.

“You’re getting yourself killed, Rogers,” Bucky says, but his defenses are down. He dips his head away from Steve, he shrugs his hand off his good shoulder and then he pulls Steve along. Metal on skin after all.

The delicate metal tiles in Bucky’s arm shift and slot together, graceful and precise. Like the skin on a snake. Or the parts of a dismantled gun. Being put together again by a practiced hand. Each piece returning to its assigned place. A seamless design.   

Bits and parts moving not only around the elbow, along the forearm and over his wrist, but down to the tips of his fingers. They slide along the skin of Steve hands, one by one, like a caress. Careful as to not catch on to Steve's skin or catch it in between.

It’s the first time he holds Bucky’s hand without the glove. The first time he gets to make contact with the arm. In a different manner than being punched with it.

The soldier punches with both hands though. Kills with left and right. But it’s always Bucky’s right pointer that pulls the trigger. Never a metal finger.

The asset is the weapon, Steve reminds himself. Not the arm. The arm isn’t the weapon. Maybe the arm is the most innocent part of the Winter Soldier.

If Steve could, if he was allowed to, he’d fall on his knees right then and there and put his own mouth onto the metal. Trace every small movement. Lips grazing over every smooth line, taking in every ledge and every rim.

He can taste the arm in the air. The thick metallic scent. It’s all around him.

“Blood,” Steve realizes then, keeping his voice low.

“We’re close,” Bucky says, slowing down their stride until they’re wading through darkness.

Of course it’s Steve who steps on the corpse first, almost losing his balance if it hadn’t been for Buck’s quick reaction. It’s been a while since the arm had caused them trouble. Trouble beyond some uncoordinated movements. Short circuits. Nothing worse than a tremor.

Soon maybe, Bucky will reclaim his hand. And keep it to himself. Keep it in his pocket. They’ll still be safe like that. Only Steve will mourn the loss of the touch.

It’s HYDRA who had found them first. They’re coming to retrieve the asset. And Steve feels some relief that they didn’t kill a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent point-blank. No warning, no negotiation.

“We have to leave,” Bucky says, robbing the dead body of its guns and knives. One of the latter he hands to Steve who takes it without hesitation.

“How much do you wanna bet he didn’t walk here?” Steve asks Bucky, nodding towards the ground, although he’s not sure Bucky can even see it.

“They’ll be looking for the car,” Bucky argues. He uses his foot to turn the body around, face down on its stomach.

“Then they’ll find it,” Steve says. “Either we fight or we’ll be long gone.” He wants to look at Bucky, but he can barely make out his face. Far less an expression. He can’t even tell if Bucky is meeting his gaze.

He doesn’t hold it like he used to. Instead, he averts his eyes, looks away. To the left mostly. Staring into nothingness. Maybe he’s trying to remember. Maybe he’s trying to forget. Steve can’t tell for sure.

“Come on, Buck,” he pleads. “I know you wouldn’t mind the comfort of a car.” They’ve been taking to foot for far too long now. They’ve worn out their boots. They’ve worn out their feet. Their spirits.

“Fine,” Bucky says then, through gritted teeth. So much Steve can tell. He grins at the image building in his mind. From his memory. Of Bucky. Not the soldier. “You drive.”

Steve nods. When he remembers that Bucky might not see him, he seeks Bucky’s shoulder with his hand. Finds it. Finds his metal shoulder that shifts heavy under Bucky’s breath. As his chest rises and falls the segments rearrange themselves.

If it hadn’t been for the touch, for Steve’s tactile hand, nothing would have given Bucky’s agitation away. His stress. The threat, the tension and then the kill. It’s no mission anymore. He won’t be wiped. It’ll take its toll now.

“Thank you, Bucky,” Steve says then. “For saving my life,” he tells him, feeling the need to mend Bucky’s strain. Not just the need. It’s no courtesy. He is grateful for Bucky’s actions. And listening into himself, he doesn’t carry remorse. He wants Bucky to know that he’s on his side. That they’re unconditionally and irreversibly on the same side. No matter where that may be. “We could have been dead by now,” Steve adds.

Bucky looks down. Steve can’t be sure, but he still knows. He looks down and out later in the car. Both of his hands in his lap. And if Steve was more courageous, he’ll reach over, lay his hand over Bucky’s right and just hold it. Feel his skin shift under his palm for a change. And if he was insane, he’d lift it and bring it to his mouth. Kissing the back of Buck’s hand. And the finger that pulled the trigger.

But Steve’s only brave when it comes to doing what’s right. Only brave when it comes to his own missions. Captain America’s missions. He’s not so different from the soldier. From the Winter Soldier. He reaches over nonetheless, but settles for Bucky’s left. He even squeezes the metal because he’s convinced now that Bucky can tell. He gently brushes it with his thumb even, but that’s more for him than for Bucky.

The arm twitches and Steve pulls his hand back. Was that Bucky shaking him off?

“The arm,” Bucky starts, he even turns to give Steve a quick glance. “It wasn’t-,” he tries again, but then lets out a frustrated breath and looks back out the window.

But Steve heard him. So he puts his hand back on the metal wrist and doesn’t retreat once it starts twitching again. He holds his spot until long after Bucky had fallen asleep.

The second time Bucky kills someone since they’ve disappeared, it’s not with a gun. It’s not his trigger finger that makes the choice.

They got the guy tied up in an abandoned shed. More trees surrounding them. Different wood though. Hundreds of miles from the motel. From the other body. Bucky says he’s sure the guy is HYDRA’s. Steve agrees. But the guy insists he’s from S.H.I.E.L.D., so they let it sit for a moment.

Bucky squints at him from the cabin corner while Steve works his way through the guy’s phone.

Nothing.

Maybe if Steve knew how to actually use these things, he’ll find something more telling.

In the end, it’s Steve who throws the first punch. The guy had it coming though. Steve could deal with being called a criminal. He could deal with Bucky being called a criminal. He could deal with being called a traitor. Being called selfish and irresponsible. But then the guy said something that made Steve snap first.

He’d called Steve too gracious at first. And then accused him of being hypocritical when it came to Bucky. He called him the Winter Soldier though. Steve had only shrugged because, yes, he was a hypocrite when it came to Bucky. When it came to the soldier. And he didn’t care.

But then the guy had said he was being 'too benignant’, and 'soft hearted’, and thus Steve shut him up.

Bucky hadn’t even flinched at the use of the word. And Steve knows it’s because the language doesn’t match.

добросердечный, Steve thinks. Yes, he knows them by heart. Every single one of them. Could spell them out on paper in his sleep. In the dust in this shack. But he’s never actually spoken any of them out loud. Not even muttered them under his breath. Or practiced the roll of his tongue. He was too scared to even try.

Once Steve’s fist had connected with the guy’s face, he screamed himself into a fit and wouldn’t calm down until the metal hand was wrapped tightly around his throat.

Around his throat, Steve noted, around, around, around. And then, only a blink later, Bucky’s fingers weren’t just pressing onto his neck anymore, but they were buried deep inside it. And then the guy was dead. And Bucky was shaking.

He needs a long moment to pull his fingers out from the guy’s body. He’s trembling so hard, that even the segments of the metal arm restlessly move with the rest of his body.

Steve stares. Can’t stop staring at the permanent rearrangement, the shifting patterns so mesmerizing they draw Steve in.

Bucky blames the dysfunctional arm. “I didn't mean to,” he stammers and looks at Steve in shock in panic. Pulling his eyes from the arm to meet Bucky’s gaze, Steve gives him the smallest, the warmest, the most soft-hearted smile he has to offer.

It doesn’t make any difference to Steve.

They clean Bucky up in the bathroom of a gas station. “It’s cold,” Steve warns before he guides Bucky’s hand under the running tab of a broken sink. A crack runs through the small bowl, and the pipes underneath it are leaking a copious amount of water.

Bucky huffs, which makes Steve guess that the metal hand can’t feel any temperature. Steve uses his own hand to scrub him clean, rubbing his fingers over the metal and scraping every smallest gap clean with his nails.

When they’re done, Steve dries him with the cuff of his sweater. He looks at Bucky, waiting patiently for him to lift his gaze in return before he gives him another smile. He doesn’t have to consciously make himself do that. It’s the vulnerability of Buck’s face, this shyness that Steve had never known that changes his expression automatically. That softens his brows and adds worry to his eyes. That leaves gentleness in the corner of his mouth. And wistfulness on his lips. Wistfulness and longing. Longing, rusted, seventeen. Daybreak. Benign. Homecoming.

Home. Bucky’s returned to him. Home has returned to him.

Bucky’s expression doesn’t change. But he doesn’t look away either, so Steve takes the opportunity to look him over. Look for any indication of something the soldier needs that Bucky wouldn’t ask for. Something Bucky needs, the asset couldn’t ask for. Wouldn’t have to ask for.

His lips are a little dry. Bloodshot left eye from the long night and the dead guy’s elbow. Bucky may need a razor to shave. Something greasy to eat. A good sleep.

The soldier needs orders. He can tell by the helpless, empty gaze where determination used to reign.

Bucky's mind doesn't work like a person's mind anymore. It rejects chaos. It detests chaos. It's a catalogue of actions. A list of tasks. One done, onto the next. Find the target, complete the mission, stand down until order. Bucky isn’t dealing. He isn’t coping. He is functioning. Bucky is the function.

And it tears Steve’s heart in two.

Out of the blue, Bucky drops his head and steps forward, butting it against Steve’s chest. It breaks Steve’s heart to see him like that. He puts one hand in the nape of Bucky’s neck and, without even thinking about it, lets his lips graze over the back of Bucky’s head, over his hair that hides his face.

The lights flicker and drops of water still fall from the leaking pipe. The smell of urine and chlorine clogs Steve’s nose. And yet, he continues to hold Bucky to his chest where his muscles relax and let him breathe a little easier.

As they walk through the streets, he puts his arm around Buck’s shoulder, keeps him close, metal arm between them, glove slipped on high with his sleeve pulled low, and with their heads sticking together. Just like Natasha taught him. He’d kiss him if he had to. He’d kiss him even if he didn’t.

They sleep in a car they break into and decide to let it take them a while further north.

Bucky sleeps and Steve drives. With both hands on the wheel. He hates it. He fumbles for a while. The radio, the air conditioning, the radio again. Then his seat and the backrest. Then Bucky’s seat. And then Bucky’s sleeve.

He’s still wearing the glove. Steve hates it. He wants it off. He wants Bucky’s naked hand. He wants Bucky’s naked metal arm.

“Buck,” Steve says gently, he doesn’t want to send Bucky into panic. Rip him from his sleep in anticipation of a threat. “Hey, Buck,” Steve says again. Yes, he is selfish enough to wake him just so he can see.

Bucky wakes slowly. A frown first and then a curl of his neck and shoulders. Like a child who hides in himself as to not be disturbed. He moves his hands before he even blinks. He reaches out for Steve, puts his hand around his elbow.

So he knows he’s safe, Steve thinks. He knows he’s with me. The moment Bucky’s eyes take focus though, his hand snaps back into his lap and he squirms in his seat.

Did he not want to touch Steve? Or was he afraid his hand would misbehave? Do with Steve as it did with the other guy?

“How’s the arm, Buck?” Steve asks. He had asked Bucky before if water was okay. Before he had rinsed the blood off it. Bucky had looked at him as if he was stupid. Maybe Bucky had pulled him from the river, but that didn’t mean it was healthy, right? Steve didn’t know how bionics work. If he did he’d help Bucky with the malfunctions. “How’s the arm?” he asks again.

Bucky glances at him again, confused, and then he touches his left shoulder with his right hand. It’s the gentlest Steve has ever seen him touch the metal arm. It’s how Steve touched it just that night.

“Peachy,” Bucky says with a similar look he gave Steve in the shabby bathroom.

“Yeah?” Steve asks, giving the arm a quick look. A quick nod. A quick tug on Bucky’s sleeve. Anything, to softly coax him into showing it.

Bucky shrugs and pulls roughly at the glove till it slips off. He shows Steve the hand, flexes his fingers and then does something so unexpected, so annoyingly cocky, teasing, so Rogers-and-Barnes, that it’ll haunt Steve for the rest of the day.

He flicks his fingers in Steve’s face, snapping them like he would with his human hand and grins when Steve’s flinches.

“Jumpy, Cap?” he asks and, honest to God, chuckles.

“Don’t tell Tony,” Steve just says, because he needs to make light of his choice. He needs to make light of his choice, when there is nothing light about it. Choosing Bucky wasn’t the hard part. That was the easy part. The no brainer. The question that wasn’t a question at all.

But Steve choosing Bucky weighs heavy on Buck’s shoulders. Whether he’d admit to it or not. Whether he thinks he deserves it or not. Whether he thinks Steve was right or not. Whether he thinks Steve was reasonable.

“How’s the face?” Steve asks then, worrying about the shadowing bruise around Bucky’s eye.

Bucky repeats the whole thing. He tucks his hair behinds his ear and then turns to show Steve his face. ”Full sight,” he tells him with another shrug.

Was this what Steve was asking for? A mission report? Could he go on like this? How’s the face, how are the teeth, how are the ribs, how’s the heart? Would Bucky just willingly show him every single part of his body? No questions asked?

Show me your skin, soldier. Show me where they touched you, where they hurt you. Show me with your hand, put a metal finger on every single spot. We'll go over each bit, each pore, each hair. Mission report on each cell, soldier. Mission report on each time they scared you. And threatened you. And humiliated you.

“You don’t talk as much as you used to,” Bucky says then. “You never talk.” Steve can tell that it’s difficult for him to say these things. Mention the past. Mention the fact that he remembers.

“I didn’t think you’d want to talk,” Steve says, feeling the guilt of his own silence.

“I don’t.” That’s Bucky’s answer. I don’t’ as in 'I don’t but you should’? As in 'I don’t but I want you to’? As in 'I don’t but I wish I could’? Maybe none of it.

Maybe 'I don’t’ as in 'I don’t, period’. Definit. Finite. End of discussion. 'I don’t want to talk to you.’

“If I’d talk,” Steve says gently, “I would have to ask.” He glances at Bucky who still faces the window on his side. “And I don’t think you’d want me to ask.”

Another shrug.

“Do you want me to ask?” Steve wonders as he asks himself: Do I want to know? Can I live as I know? After I learned?

He’s thought about it before. Asking Bucky what being The Asset was like. Asking him about the memory loss. About his missions. He wanted to ask Bucky if he was allowed to rest, to eat, to have a place of his own. No matter how small. If he was allowed to have things. If at least he was allowed to choose his weapons. If he was allowed to say 'I don’t know’. To say 'I am scared’, because there was no use in wondering if he was allowed to say 'no’.

Steve wanted to ask if Bucky dreamed while in stasis.

Bucky shakes his head. And Steve nods. He’ll wait for Bucky to tell him.

The third time they were discovered, it would have been Steve’s turn to take care of it. He had sworn to himself that he couldn’t continue using Bucky as a weapon. As The Weapon. As his own asset. Protection was Steve's mission. Not fucking both of them up so bad that they would never be able to return. That they would only be able to connect to one another. Although, it did cross Steve's mind that they were already there.

Unfortunately, the third time they were found, it was neither HYDRA nor S.H.I.E.L.D., but the CIA. It was Sharon. It was the day Steve failed Bucky twice.

First by not noticing something was off until she stood there, in the middle of the shitty abandoned place they chose to spend the night in.

And then by stopping him as the soldier had bolted into the night. By running after him in sheer panic, throwing his body over Bucky’s, dragging him down, face first into the dirt.

Instead, shouldn’t he have told him to run? Shouldn’t he have ensured Bucky’s getaway like he had promised himself in the woods? Where he would have died only so Bucky could slip from their grip.

But here they were now, wrestling on the ground. Bucky's body hot and strong and restlessly fighting under Steve’s, who uses every last part of his body to keep him down. Presses him into the gravel, into the sand, into wet fallen leaves.

Bucky tries to crawl to freedom relentlessly, the soldier won’t ever admit defeat. All of his muscles move against Steve, making him feel every one of his in return.

Bucky’s metal shoulder moves painfully against Steve’s grip, violently mechanical, strong and unyielding like a steam engine. Steve puts his elbow where Bucky’s ribcage connects to his spine in order to gain some leverage. With his shin in the pit of Bucky’s knee and his toes hooked behind Bucky’s ankle, Steve manages to hold him in place by putting all his weight and strength into his upper body. Steve’s left hand manages to get a hold onto a tight root in the dirt that he uses to pull himself down, with Bucky helplessly trapped under him. Bucky himself wouldn’t agree with the helplessness, fight instinct running through his body like gasoline. Keeping him going and going and going.

They’ve been on the run for weeks, and over the course of long nights and endless frustration, Steve has seen most of Bucky’s body. Under water and blood in the shower. Worn out and sore resting on the bed. Shaking in fear and sweating in the back of an old bus, chest rising and falling like a panting dog.

It’s safe to say that Steve’s eyes have catalogued a pretty accurate map of Bucky’s skin, but this, pressed on top of him now, gives Steve a different idea of what Bucky’s body is capable of. A better idea what the soldier was trained to do. Conditioned to do.

This is discovering Bucky with a completely different set of senses. This is beyond vision. This is beyond a simple touch. Instead, Steve can feel Bucky’s body working as if it were his own muscles. He can feel the effort and the strain. Can feel the literal labor of every fiber where it originates in the depth of his flesh and then pushes through his body right to his skin.

He can feel every breath and every bone, every single piece of the metal arm. And somewhere between his forehead buried in the crook of Bucky’s neck, furrowed, angry brows against metal and skin, and his knee, like teeth in meat, digging a bruise into the back of Bucky’s thigh, Steve, unknowingly and unintentionally, had gotten hard.

Jeans on jeans, crotch pressed against the small of Bucky’s back. A pile of worked up bodies fighting to break the other’s will. Bucky whines. It may as well be Steve’s wrist that pushes against the back of his head, Steve’s collarbone that puts strain on the nerves connecting the metal arm to his shoulder, Steve’s hip bone shadowing pressure down to his kidney. It may as well be Steve’s cock against the end of his spine and Steve’s mouth, wet and desperate, on his spine's beginning.

The click of the gun renders both of them motionless and still, frozen heat pooling between them.

“I think that’s enough, boys. Why don’t we go inside and talk,” Sharon says, somewhere behind them, causing Steve to turn into dead weight on Bucky’s back. It’s only then that he is forced to acknowledge his body’s reaction. The weight between his own thighs that is anything but dead. That fills him with the same urgency that turns Bucky’s body into a machine. That turns him into the asset.

He doesn’t move. Holds his breath once more. Waiting for something to happen. Under him, Bucky has gone from stiff petrification and an all too familiar body shock stasis to a malleable pliance. Limp, lenient, mellow. The soldier surrendering to Bucky. Bucky surrendering to Steve. Steve feeling nothing but defeat.

The metal arm jerks as it does since its malfunction and neither Bucky nor Steve react to it. Maybe finally, after all these weeks, both of them have made peace with it after all.

The sudden loss of friction and privacy didn’t go unnoticed by any part of Steve’s body, urgency slipping away as his erection loses pressure with every passing heartbeat. Steve shuts his eyes tight, swallows and flexes his fingers. He needs focus. He needs composure. Less tension. Less Bucky beneath him and less Sharon Carter watching them behind his back.

The second most of Steve’s thoughts have found their way back from the obsession with Bucky’s fighting body, with all of his muscles and tendons and veins, every forceful motion and constrained movement, every flex and reflex, every drop of sweat, the second Steve finds himself back in his own body and disconnected enough to get up, Bucky -in an act of cruel and mocking punishment- rolls his hips back. The curve of his ass drags over Steve’s half-hard cock.

Caught off-guard, Steve falls back on his forearms, elbows slipping from Bucky’s ribs, painfully hitting ground between Bucky’s arm and torso. He ends up knocking his temple against Bucky’s shoulder blade, body collapsing in a sudden surge of pain. He slumps heavily and without warning onto Bucky’s back, who chokes and coughs under the sudden blow. Luckily, the unexpected and uncomfortable re-entanglement rids Steve of all subconscious physical fantasizing and his misguided sexual charge.

Back inside, Sharon leans against the wall close by the back door. The one Bucky had pushed through to make for an escape. She keeps her gun in hand but at least lets it rest against her thigh, barrel down and safety pin in place. Bucky crouches down against the wall opposite of her, but soon stretches his legs out and sits on the floor. The entire front of his shirt is a field of dirt and dust, and the open edge of his metal arm from the time he had tried to dig his fingers under it, has teared a hole into the fabric as Steve had forced him on the ground. There might be stains of blood, they might be water stains, sweat or spit that soaked up the dirt from the surface. There’s dirt in his hair and more on his jeans around the knees. He looks more bored than resigned. In as much disbelief about Steve’s panicked action as Steve himself.

Steve wants to sit himself down next to him. He wants to butt his own head against Bucky’s chest this time, he wants nothing more than Bucky giving him the same smile Steve couldn’t hold back from him the other night.

Right now, Steve can’t even look at him. Embarrassed and confused and torn. He can’t look at Sharon either. So he just stands there, with heavy shoulders, the echo of every jab and every stroke of Bucky’s body parts pulsing deep under his skin and a tickle of guilt rippling over his face. The last time, he had seen Sharon, the last time they had seen each other, had talked to each other, about Bucky, about Steve protecting Bucky, they had kissed. He hadn’t forgotten but he hadn’t thought much about it since then either. He wonders if she did. He wonders if Bucky did.

“I’m not here to bring you in,” she says, looking at Steve first and then at Bucky. “I want to help you.”

Bucky scoffs, lets his head fall back, catching Steve’s gaze. Holds it. Holds it until Steve looks away. Has to look away.

“How?” Steve asks Sharon. He wonders if they’re beyond help already.

“There’s always a proof of innocence possible within the system,” she just says.

“But I’m guilty,” Bucky tells her and Steve holds out an angry hand. He can’t have Bucky talking like that. Can’t stand it. Not even if they were alone.

“He’s not guilty,” Steve argues immediately. “He didn’t have a choice. He wasn’t himself. Not with what HYDRA did to him. He isn’t responsible for what happened to Tony’s parents.”

“I killed them,” Bucky says with no concern for either Steve’s nerves or his patience.

“Shut up,” Steve spits in Bucky’s general direction.

“You can always turn yourself in,” Sharon reminds Bucky, and Steve is getting closer and closer to losing it.

“Don’t,” he just says, this time gesturing to Sharon to keep that thought to herself. “Just don’t,” he adds.

“I could,” Bucky tells Steve, who has to hold onto his own head to keep himself from flipping his shit.

“You don’t get to have a say in this, Buck,” he says, fighting tears back with a few focused breaths.

“You’re my handler now?” Bucky asks. Under different circumstances, the question would have send Steve onto a painful guilt trip, but he can’t allow Bucky to make stupid decisions right now. He won’t allow it. His selfishness won’t allow it.

“Do you need one?” Steve asks back. Maybe Bucky’s aggressive parts must be dealt with aggressively. Maybe Bucky’s cynical parts need to be dealt with cynically. Maybe the asset needs a handler as much as the soldier needs a captain, Steve thinks, but he can’t deny feeling shame over his mindset.

“Do you?” Bucky asks back and smirks, confirming that he did what he did outside fully aware of what he was doing. Steve feels cold sweat. Like nervous laughter and throwing up. He feels shaky and naked. Small and vulnerable. And into Bucky like he’d been over three quarters of a century ago. And all the same embarrassed about it. Bucky is his best friend. And isn’t love a traitor to friendship? A broken trust?

Despite everything, he cannot look away. He faces Bucky like he faces his enemies. Head on. Steve’s cheeks are flushed. He knows, and he knows that Sharon is looking at him. Looking at him looking at Bucky. This is not how it should be at all. This is a mess, Steve realizes. This is a huge pile of his personal mess on top of a huge pile of Bucky’s mess. On top of HYDRA’s mess. And somehow Sharon got caught up in between. By Steve who had pulled her in. As selfishly as he had acted with Bucky.

“Tony’s not gonna stop,” Steve says eventually. Lying to everyone and himself. “He wants to see Bucky punished.”

“He wants to see justice for his parents,” Sharon cuts in.

“I can’t trust him,” Steve tells her. Something inside him fighting for what isn’t his, but what he wants to keep. “I can’t trust you.”

“Excuse me?” Sharon asks, indignation all over her face. The 'what the fuck?’ lingering unspoken between them.

It’s true though, he can’t bring himself to trust her. He can’t bring himself to trust anyone with Bucky. Bucky is his. And he is Bucky’s. And whatever happens to him, happens to Steve.

“If you’d wanted to help, you wouldn’t be here,” Steve says. “You would be out there looking for those who are responsible. Those who are still alive.”

“You know what,” she says, pushing herself off the wall and walking towards him. “You’re an asshole, Captain Rogers,” she says taking his hand and placing her gun in it. “A goddamn asshole. You’re lucky, I care enough.” As she hands over her weapon, she holds Steve’s gaze much braver than he could ever be. “Sam says 'Hi’, by the way,” she tells him. “Maybe let him know you're alive? If you still care for any of your friends. Or the people on your side.”

And with that she’s gone. Leaving Steve and Bucky behind in suffocating silence. Bucky scoffs again and shakes his head and Steve wouldn’t mind kicking his legs for it.

“What’s your plan, Rogers?” Bucky asks, not moving from his spot on the ground. “There’s nowhere to run to.”

“I don’t care,” Steve says immediately, surprised by his own stance.

“You have to let me go,” Bucky tells him. He even looks at Steve and forces a smile, but none of it changes the fact that it hurts both of them the same to have these words being spoken out loud. Steve knows Bucky better than that. He even knows the soldier better than that. Better than a fake smile.

“Fuck do I have,” Steve just says. He checks Sharon’s gun for safety and then hooks it under his waistband. Time to move. Relocate. Rinse and repeat. He’ll call Sam once Bucky’s safe. He’ll call Sharon once Bucky’s safe. He’ll care again once Bucky’s safe. If he’ll ever be safe.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't easy to forget. It didn't just slip from his mind. The thing with Bucky’s trauma was that it was still easy to pretend it wasn’t there. If one wanted to.

Not that it wasn’t constantly lurking behind every corner. Under every blanket. Looming over their heads throughout days and nights. It was there in Bucky. In the fact that he wasn't Bucky Barnes from Brooklyn anymore. He wasn’t James Barnes of the 107th division anymore.

But Steve wasn’t going to pretend it mattered. He wasn’t Steve Rogers of Brooklyn anymore either. Maybe, without his shield, without his friends, without his responsibility, he wasn’t even Captain America anymore.

So it was easy enough to ignore. Bucky's trauma. It was easy enough to ignore as long as Bucky refused to acknowledge it. As long as the soldier was functioning. And as long as the soldier was enough for Steve. The soldier and the little bits and pieces of Bucky that remained. As long as Steve played along to the silence.

Which he did, because facing Bucky’s demons meant taking a good long and hard look at his own. And no one in their right mind would want to look those beasts in the eyes.

To be a good man, he had promised. Better than good. To be a great man.

But Steve had a before and an after, too. Before the serum and after. Before S.H.I.E.L.D. and after. Before losing Bucky and after. Before finding the soldier, the asset, the ghost. Before surrendering to him. Before sealing it with his life. Acknowledging and manifesting that even the Winter Soldier was Bucky. And that he wasn’t to be touched, to be fought, to be harmed. Whether he remembered or not. Before the river. And after.  

Bucky wasn’t the only soldier. Wasn’t Steve the other side of his coin? Their stories interchangeable if it wasn’t for good and evil, for freedom and force. Wasn’t Bucky’s trauma Steve’s trauma? And wasn’t Bucky’s denial, Steve’s denial? And couldn’t Steve convince Bucky to live despite it, with it, through it, if only he did?

There’s always some teeth grinding at night to remind Steve of the trauma. He hates it. But given the little bits and pieces that he does know --the stasis, the mask, the memory wipe-- given what he’d seen at the facility, he wasn’t going to force a mouthguard between Bucky’s teeth. 

Just so he didn’t have to listen to it as he watched Bucky sleep. 

Sometimes, it caused Bucky strain in his jaw, in his neck. Bucky’s good enough at hiding any pain, but Steve was getting good enough at reading him. He could tell by the way Bucky would support his head on longer car rides. How he would use his shoulders only to tilt his head. How he would start chewing on air when he got bored.

He never had nightmares. Or if he did, he never told Steve about it. He never cried in his sleep. Never talked. Never screamed. Never jolted if it hadn’t been for the arm or Steve waking him. Touching him on purpose or by accident. If Bucky didn’t toss and turn from restless thoughts and restless muscles, he lay so still, breathing so flat that, the first few times it happened, Steve had gotten up to check on him. Worried that something was wrong with him. That his heart had given out. That he had gotten so used to stasis that he could magically recreate it by himself and his own. And that he would chose an unconscious life over a life with Steve.

Bucky’s trauma always shows in the things he doesn’t do. When he doesn’t flinch, or doesn’t hide. When he doesn’t ask for things. When he just stood there in the rain, not looking, not even thinking of shelter. When he stood in the cold without his hand in his pocket.

The one with the skin.

When he didn't react at all to Steve's rules about not showering unsupervised. How he'd just adjusted to Steve's schedule and routine. Doing what he was told, when he was told. Never mentioning the lack of privacy as if privacy was a concept he had no recollection of.

It didn't take Steve a couple of days to realize what he was doing to Bucky. No, he knew right away. But it took him a couple of days to get a grip on his fears. A couple of days for Steve to give Bucky back his space. A couple days to remind himself that if Bucky wanted to hurt, he would find a way. He would find a way even if Steve was right there.

But even the day Steve gently closed the bathroom door behind Bucky once he’d stepped into the shower, Buck hadn’t reacted to it. Hadn't even turned his head. Hadn’t said anything later. 

But he hadn’t hurt himself either. Not that Steve could see.

Usually, the moments after Bucky’s showers were the ones Steve used to steal a couple of glances. Every time he told himself he could do without any. Then he allowed himself one, but reminded himself that one should be enough. But one was never enough.

Bucky’s body was so much more than a mere display of muscles. Of skin. Of shapes. It wasn’t a painting, once finished forever unchanged except by decay. By sunlight or age or poor care. Bucky’s body was alive. And it was different every time Steve let his eyes fall on his naked chest. His naked back. The naked arms.

Sometimes, he was all strength and tension. Hard lines and resilience. It was the soldier's body. And it riled Steve up all the same as the more softer version of him. When casual almost playful movements made Bucky look more like the young sergeant Steve remembered so well. Those days, even the metal arm seemed less heavy. Less violent. Just another hand. 

Many soldiers had come home with wounds. Missing part of their bodies. In that, Bucky was just another veteran. Young and old at the same time. Alive and dead at the same time. Laughing and in pain at the same time.

Those days, Bucky touched his own body like a living thing. Sometimes feeling for sore spots, sometimes noticing weight loss or weight gain. Wiping away drops of water after they ran down an inch. After he noticed the tickle.

The soldier touched his body like a weapon. With different precision. More precision. Different worth. More worth. Different tenderness. It taught Steve a more gentle touch for later, when he checked their guns. Their knives. It taught him the beauty of the hard lines. Would he ever be able to touch another weapon and not think of Bucky?

That day though, the day after Steve had let Bucky shower alone for the first time in a week, the day after Steve had stolen his usual unnecessarily bold and unnecessarily large amount of glances, that day after he didn’t hurt himself, was the day neither of them could deny Bucky’s trauma any longer.

It was coming for a while now. It was coming the whole week. With growing tension since Sharon's speech. Subtle changes at first, yet noticeable. Changes that were building up under Bucky’s skin, inside his bones and the metal of his arm. It started with a state of agitation, impatience and a short temper.

Out of nowhere Bucky, who couldn’t even bring himself to ask Steve for a bathroom break while they were driving, started to complain. Massively complain. Complain about every little thing. Never about pain though. Never about justice or desperation.

But about the temperature in the car. About Steve’s driving. About Steve's way to pronounce Bucharest, Siberia and the Russian word for winter.

He complained about being tired one time, about Steve not letting him sleep enough.Then about Steve not sleeping long enough.

He snapped at Steve a couple of times when he forgot to watch out for the metal hand and its spasms. Bucky threw him wild and angry looks if Steve didn’t hold on to it fast enough. Or if his grip was too soft.

And soon enough the complaints turned into provocations. And even later bordering on physical aggression. Not hostile, but demanding. Demanding something. A reaction. Anything.

The day before it all went to shit, he went off at Steve for misplacing one of his knives. Accused him of hiding his weapons. Of taking them from him. As if Steve could bear taking anything from Bucky.

Bucky was getting seriously close to become his own breed of bully. And Steve didn't like bullies. It threw him off. Confused him and later made him wonder if Bucky was going to bolt again. Made him worry that Bucky was going to leave him.

They alternated in sleeping schedules, one always awake as the other kept watch. That’s how it worked in the beginning. With Bucky sleeping for hours and Steve squeezing in a few minutes of rest whenever he thought them safest. Whenever he did not necessarily trusted Bucky to be alone and in silence with his memories, but when he trusted the soldier to be on lookout. But things changed as Bucky changed. Things changed after Sharon, because suddenly Steve was terrified that Bucky wanted to run. Not with him, but from him. Run to find the penance he thought he needed.

So Steve switched to nap whenever Bucky was sleeping. Lying down next to him, sometimes wide awake for the entire night to at least give his body some rest. Give his eyes some rest.

What Steve would give for them to just be. To find peace. To be with Bucky in those early hours of the day, between sleeping and waking, when the mind is as soft as the body, and dreams melt into the sheets under the morning light. To be with Bucky in safety, tucked far away from the rest of the world.

He wanted to take Bucky from those gods who wrote his fate. He wanted to take Bucky and relieve him of whatever story they were still plotting. He’s done enough, Steve thought. He and I have done enough. He and I lived more than one life already. We were never asked if we wanted to reenlist. We were taken like bodies who were uninhibited. Deserted shells. But now he was going to take Bucky from the war and bring him to peace.

But Bucky kept coming for more confrontations. Since that night Sharon had found them, Bucky was raging conflict and resentment. And having felt first-hand in turn what Steve was capable of, him being a match to his own strength, things escalated that day after.

Things were different from the start. Normally, Bucky would go for his jeans first, slip them on, underwear or no underwear, Bucky just took what was lying around anyway. But this time, Bucky hovered, Bucky stalled. And Steve’s gaze, who was watching Bucky from the corner of the room, was met with an unsure glance from Bucky this time. Nervous even.

He held on to the towel around his hips with his right hand, an unusual modesty for the soldier.

“You okay?” Steve asked, already worrying if Bucky was hiding self-inflicted wounds around his pelvis or his thighs. He tried not to let it show.

Bucky’s glance turned into a stare. A silent, heavy stare. Then he shrugged his shoulders and, in an instant, Steve could tell what was wrong.

The metal arm was unresponsive. Not a single segment realigned with the movement of Bucky’s shoulders. It was dead weight tied to Bucky’s body, to the blade of his shoulder, the muscles of his chest.

Steve stood immediately, holding back stress and panic. And anger. Though, he couldn’t know what happened.

“What did you do?” he asked, because he was an idiot. Because he wanted to keep the arm. Because he wanted to believe the arm was his and that Bucky was trying to hurt him by taking it from him. By destroying it. He didn’t know why he wanted to believe that.

“I showered,” Bucky said, voice indifferent.

Steve had to know it could happen. Steve had to know it was probably bound to happen. After Tony and the fight. But he never thought it would.

“Does it hurt?” he had asked then after realizing his own unfitting reaction.

Bucky shook his head. “Feels heavier,” he'd just told him. “Colder.”

With a careful hand, Steve reached out for the arm, fingers tracing the lines like he had craved to do so many times. Holding the arm in his palms, thumb stroking over the metal in a surreal state of grief.

“You feel numb?” Steve asked, a single finger tracing the border of Bucky’s shoulder, grazing over the skin clinging to the metal. He didn’t need to wait for an answer. He was feeling that Bucky felt it. Maybe there were no goosebumps in the dip of Bucky’s collar bones, no shudder in his breath. Maybe no heartbeat so fast, so strong that Steve could feel the echoes through the seemingly hollow arm in his palm. But every cell in the skin under Steve’s fingertip leaned into the touch. Every nerve responded so loud that Steve didn’t have to ask to know. He knew.

“Can you believe I’m the broken one?” Bucky had said then, almost cynically again. Almost spiteful. Almost hurtful. “After how we started out?”

Steve leaned in. In his own spite. His own hurtful ways. Each word a promise. Like ‘the end of the line’. Like the 'not without you’. “I live for broken things,” he said, placing an even bolder kiss halfway on metal, halfway on skin.

And Bucky? He hid his face and then fumbled for a shirt. “Can you help me put it on?” he asked. The first time he had asked for help.

Wordlessly, Steve took the shirt from him and rolled one sleeve up between fingers and thumbs for Bucky to slip the metal arm through it easily with the help of his right. It occurred to Steve then that while Bucky had lost his arm, he had never been without it. Without the metal arm. He didn’t know yet how to do with one hand only.

Once the metal arm was dressed, he managed to yank the rest of the shirt on. He managed to pull up his boxers. Even his jeans. But he needed Steve to help with the buttons.

“You smell good, Buck,” Steve said, because what difference did it make. He had already kissed him. The back of his head and his shoulder. He had already dragged his heated body over his back. He had already given up S.H.I.E.L.D. and Tony and Sharon. “You’ve always smelled good when you came from the shower.”

“I don’t think that’s a compliment,” Bucky said, but he gave Steve a little smile. “What are we going to do?”

“We keep moving,” Steve told him, handing Bucky his favorite knife. Yes, he knew exactly which one it was. The same one Bucky had almost killed Steve with. Before he remembered.

“It’s only going to get worse, Steve,” Bucky said and by now Steve was tired of hearing his own name spoken like that. Insistent and manipulative. A call to a past neither Bucky nor Steve could return to.

“It’s been worse,” Steve told him. “It’s been worse when I thought you were dead. All the times I thought you were dead. This can’t ever be worse.”

Or so he thought.

As Bucky learned that he really only had one arm now, as the soldier realized he was dragging around a useless limp, he ceased to function.

It started with a jacket that Steve had to help him zipping up and ended with a missed shot and a fall Bucky couldn’t compensate. As they ran to safety from whoever got them this time, Bucky struggled with pace and balance.

After they broke into an abandoned warehouse, Bucky kept screaming at Steve in Russian, pushing him and throwing punches until his knuckles bled. He started pulling at his arm again, hammering the metal hand against the wall with his right, throwing himself against the concrete, shoulder first, over and over again.

The sheer violence and force of his outbreak rendered Steve frozen in shock, helplessly calling out for Bucky to calm down. He took the punches like he always did. Like he used to do pre-serum. He took it and took it and took it.

He only snapped back into himself, into his own soldier, when Bucky put the metal forearm on the ground and went for the gun in his waistband.

Steve used his entire body to stop him, wrestling Bucky to the ground again, his hands gripping Bucky’s wrist so tight that for a moment he was scared he had broken some of the bones. But Bucky wouldn’t drop the gun. He fought much wilder than the soldier had ever fought with Steve, using his head, his chin, his teeth, anything that could hurt Steve but simultaneously made Steve hesitate to use all of his strength in return.

He twisted his body and threw his own head against Steve’s until Steve pulled back for just a second, worried Bucky could kill himself. Split his skull open or break his neck.

The second Steve gave him even the slightest bit of space, Bucky had already freed himself from Steve’s grip and managed to turn himself on his back. And then he held the gun to Steve’s head.

“I’m only doing this for you,” he panted, breathless, mouth filled with blood. Maybe his own. Maybe Steve’s from where he had bit him. “I’m only running for you.”

“The hell you do,” Steve spat, ready to do some yelling himself. “What about Bucharest?” he asked, knowing that he had mispronounced it again. “You ran. And when Tony tried to kill you, you fought. You raised your gun at him and your fists. And you fought. Because you want to live, Bucky. Because you want to live.”

Bucky stared at him, breathless and angry. And maybe Steve had hoped that this would be the end of it. But Bucky kept coming at him. Instead of shooting Steve, he used the gun to hit Steve’s face, Steve’s shoulders Steve's arm. He came back for more fight and more pain. More punishment. More abuse.

And he wanted Steve to be its keeper.

He came back for what he thought he deserved from Tony, from HYDRA, from S.H.I.E.L.D.. From Steve. From anyone.

And because he had learned that the fastest and easiest way to rile Steve up was by means of self-destruction, because he had learned that Steve would hurt him in different ways to prevent more harm, because he had learned the lengths Steve would go to force Bucky to comply, he didn’t stop at hitting Steve with the gun, he started hitting himself with it. His head, his chest, his metal shoulder.

The entire scene was so terrifying, so unpredictable, so paralyzing and painful that Steve let out the most soul-tearing scream before he used all his strength left to force the weapon out of Bucky’s hand and knocked him out with a punch of his own.

And then he passed out as well.

 

Steve comes to himself a while later, jerking and shaking, and then searching for Bucky in panic. But Buck's still lying next to him on the ground. Breathing. Unconscious still. With his heart beating. And Steve exhales his relief, chest tight and throat sore.

He lets himself fall to ground once more, looking up at the high ceiling of the warehouse suddenly more scared of what could have happened, of what Bucky could have done, of what he himself could have done than of what had already happened.

But it didn’t happen, he reminds himself, trying to focus on that. Thinking only of the fact that they are both alive.

He crawls over to Bucky, to check his head. The bruise from where Steve had caught him with the handle of the gun doesn’t look too bad and Steve hopes, he was easy enough to knock out because his body was in desperate need for a restart anyway.

Then he cradles Bucky in his arms and pulls him halfway on his lap, pulls himself and Bucky towards the wall so he can rest his back against it. Bucky’s legs between his own. And then he just holds him. Warms him. Warms the metal arm for him.

He doesn’t need to ask himself, if Bucky is worth all this.

He is.

He just is.

And he’ll do it all over again. Because Bucky is worth all of Steve’s lives. All of his laughter and all of his pain. All of his fears and doubts. All of his friendship. All of his trust.

Bucky isn’t disposable. The arm isn’t disposable. The soldier isn’t disposable. Nothing Bucky has ever touched or will ever touch is disposable. Or replaceable. Or insignificant.

Bucky isn't a burden. The soldier isn't a burden. The arm isn’t a burden.

Even if they’ll never recover. Steve. Bucky. The arm. Even if he’ll forever be scared of those ten words.

Longing, rusted, seventeen.

Daybreak.

Furnace, nine, benign.

Homecoming. 

One.

Freight car.

Steve wasn’t afraid of the soldier. Steve wasn’t afraid of the asset. Maybe Steve was afraid of Bucky. Of losing him. Of loving him.

When Bucky wakes, he looks worse than ever but he doesn’t lash out at Steve, he doesn’t launch his body at him. Instead, he just looks up at Steve. The same look he gave him after Steve had saved him from HYDRA the very first time.

“It’s me,” Steve says again, not just to remind Bucky. To remind himself. “It’s just you and me.” He runs his hand over Bucky’s head, gentle and careful, brushing through his hair with his fingers. “It’s just us and we’re okay, Buck.”

They don’t move for hours. Steve holding Bucky and Bucky lost in thought. He shouldn’t sleep. Steve shouldn’t sleep. But it’s what they do, drifting in and out of it.

They steal another car, Steve driving as he usually does. Bucky holds onto the metal arm, breathing evenly. Almost calm. Almost relaxed. Calmer than Steve has ever seen him when he was awake.

“You don’t know how it is,” Bucky says. He looks straight ahead, no blinking, no expression. He watches the road, taking in everything but Steve. Not a single look. But he talks and Steve feels a rush of life going through his own body. Relief again? Happiness maybe?

“You don’t know how it is, being wiped of your memories,” Buck says.

Obviously, Steve wants him to tell what it’s like. He wants Bucky to tell his story. Encourage him to go on, but he’s afraid to interrupt him now that Bucky has found the courage to begin.

"You'd wake with nothing but your body," Bucky starts again. "You'd be hungry but you don't know what you like. Because you can't even remember what a meal is. You can't even remember what people eat. You can't remember what you had before." He scoffs. Then laughs. "You'd still get horny, you know? Something inside your body does. But you have no fantasies. You have no preferences. You'd be tired, angry or in pain, but you don't know what to do with these things. You don't remember if you sleep on your side or on your back. You don't remember how you used to deal with your anger. You don't remember what you did to mend your pain. You don't even remember if you've been in pain before. You have no scale for pain. You don't know how much suffering is too much suffering. Or how little suffering is normal."

"I'm sorry, Buck," Steve whispers. Not even a whisper. Just mouths the words, because they need to be spoken just as much as Bucky needs to be listened to.

"Over the years," he goes on, "your body is the only thing that remembers. Your mouth remembers how to speak those words. Я готов отвечать," he says, forcing a shiver down Steve's spine. "It knows when to open, when to bite down. Your spine knows when to lie back. Even your hands remember when to brace for a pain whose memory you've been robbed of. Your fingers remember how to shoot, the arms remember how to fight. The legs remember how to run. But they still had to train me before dispatching me for missions. They had to give me a run through every time. The weapons, the motorcycle, the targets. Or they would send people with me who'd drive. Who would hand me the weapons, the tools. They'd hand me loaded grenades and my body would just know what to do with them. With the guns. The knives. And if I didn't know, if my body didn't, then the arm would know. It had better muscle memory than me." 

For a moment, Bucky stays quiet, flexing the fingers of his right hand. Looking down on it. Looking down on the metal hand in his lap.Then he looks back up with new determination and even glances at Steve before he resumes talking. "I didn't like being on missions. They would hand me weapons and food and just assumed I could tell the difference. But I never knew when they handed me water if it was for me to drink. Or if I was supposed to wash myself with it. Or if it was toxic. Or if it wasn't water but oil for the guns. For the bike. I didn't have to worry about it when based." He looks at Steve again and this time doesn't let his eyes fall again. "Feeling like this," Bucky says, "like today, like yesterday," he corrects himself, glancing towards sunrise. "With the arm and what it does to the rest of me, it feels like someone wiping my memory again. A different kind of memory. Still it feels like I'm losing the only thing I could always rely on."

Steve tries to not make this about him, so he stays silent when all he really wants to do is scream his apology. I'm sorry I wasn't there. I'm sorry I didn't know. I'm sorry I let you down. I'm sorry I couldn't reach for you fast enough, strong enough on that godforsaken train. I'm sorry I wasn't the thing you could always rely on. 

"And then part of me," Bucky goes on, not knowing about Steve's internal desperation. The way Steve tightens his grip around the wheel to stay sane. To let Bucky speak without Steve's anger. Without his regrets. His shame. "Part of me thinks, this serves me right for what I did. That they gave me the arm so I could be what they wanted me to be. And they never wanted me to be free. They never wanted me to live longer than my last mission. Maybe they wanted you to be my last mission anyway."

And that's what I was, Steve thinks. The last mission. And he'll make sure of it. He'll never let anyone send him out again. 

"I mean," Bucky starts, "you always wanted to a be soldier," he says, making Steve regret that he didn't speak up. "Not me, but it's not like we had a choice. I mean you had, but they basically enlisted everyone who could hold a gun back then. I just wanted to have a good time. I wasn't a good enough person. Not like you. And you know what they say about good people and bad things. You were always a better person than me so-"

"Bucky, stop," Steve cuts in, his voice quiet though. Not demanding. Just pleading. "You're not a bad thing happening to me. You are my friend," he says, meaning every word of it. "You are my friend, Bucky. And I get it. I get you. And I know you get me in return. And I'll fight whoever I have to fight for you. But don't make me fight you anymore. Don't make me fight my friend." 

Bucky stares. Like he always stares when there's nothing left to say. But then he nods. Not convinced. Not promising. A mere 'I'll try' written on his face.

In that moment, Steve realizes that maybe, after Bucky had now broken the silence on what they agreed not to talk about, maybe he was allowed to ask now. Maybe he was supposed to ask now. Maybe it was even his duty to ask now.

The soldier only knew physicality. It only knew orders and needs and urgency. It was Bucky who had hopes and humor. Who filled the soldier with spring. With summer heat. 

It didn't matter how long or how often Bucky was wiped from him. He was always there. He was always hibernating under frozen ground. The lack or the presence of Bucky in the soldier wasn't what determined who of the two was guilty or who of the two was innocent. To Steve they were one and the same. His friend. His heart. His devotion. 

And they were incorporating all that was _Steve_. Because Steve wasn't good, wasn't pure, wasn't a hero. Steve was just a guy. In love with his best friend. To the point of madness and insanity. A guy who could love for seventy years and never say it out loud. Who would never mind this silence as long as Bucky was alive. As long as he could picture him by his side. He loved Bucky to the point of no return. Bucky. The jerk. The soldier.

The asset.

The bad thing. 

The broken thing.

And if he wasn't Captain America anymore anyway, if he'd lost shield and reputation for good, then he was going to be a bionic expert. An engineer. A surgeon. 

He was going to be whatever Bucky needed him to be. He was going to save the arm, because it was keeping him sane.

It was keeping both of them sane.


	3. Chapter 3

For someone with a dead metal arm, Bucky’s body surprisingly breathes stealth. Watching him, Steve finds a deeper understanding of the myth he became. Steve pulls the snapback a little lower into his face, but his eyes never leave Bucky roaming the mall a level beneath him.

Does it frighten him? Or does it amuse him?

It arouses him. Once more watching the bad kid do what is so seemingly impossible. How do rules get to be broken if not by ignorance or stupidity? If not by innocence?

Steve’s not used to transgression. He doesn’t know what lies beyond the limits of his own morality. What lies beyond Steve Rogers and Captain America. Bucky knows. The soldier knows.

The soldier is the entire opposite of Captain America. He blends in. He becomes invisible. He becomes shorter and thinner and paler. He becomes utterly unthreatening. Steve has no idea how Bucky does it. How he loses the pain in his eyes, if he needs to. The frustration in his hands, if he needs to. The anger in his knees, in his feet, if he has to. 

The crowd swallows him like a pill. They make him part of the swarm. They incorporate him as one of their own. An everyday man. Although Bucky doesn't exactly have an everyday face. Although he isn’t exactly used to everyday activities. Like window shopping or picking out clothes. Not even the soldier is used to shoplifting or pickpocketing.

The soldier is death.

But Bucky is smart.

And the asset rises to the occasion.

Could Steve live like this? Steve and Bucky. Nothing left to bound them to an ordinary life. Just them getting by. Moving from place to place. Just Steve and Bucky. Just Bucky with Steve. Just Bucky for Steve. Just Bucky.

Just Bucky.

The security guard makes his usual rounds, circling the the area. He looks bored but not unattentive. It’s just another day to him. Just another shift.

And as swiftly as a breeze, Bucky brushes past him, a little nudge, a little nod, a quick apology and then the taser has moved from the guards belt into Bucky’s pocket. And then the soldier is gone.

For a few seconds, Steve lingers, trying to spot him, trying to follow him with his eyes, but fails to make out his face in the crowd, make out his shape, make out his clothes.

He hadn’t even noticed being approached, not before Bucky mutters the rough command, his breath hitting Steve between neck and ear, setting his spine on fire.

“Move,” he grunts, his tone soaking through Steve’s body, wetting the inside of every cell with the low pitch, the deep voice, the single word. Move.

Yes, he could live like this.

Fixing the arm became Steve’s obsession. The one thing he could actually manage to change. Could actually manage to fix. It became the one thing keeping him going. The thing giving him something to do besides moving them from place to place. Besides selfishly hiding Bucky from the world.

Did he have any idea what he was doing?

No.

But for hours, Bucky would allow him to get an idea of how the arm worked. Sitting patiently on a chair. On a bed. On the ground. Perfectly still. Hauntingly still. Perfectly trained.

He let Steve open the arm, check out the electronics beneath it. Steve didn’t know much about cybernetics. About weapons or prosthetics. S.H.I.E.L.D. had an entire team of developers. Of engineers. Scientists. The Avengers had Bruce. And before Steve became Captain America, he had Bucky. 

Bucky had always been the one enamoured with the future. Impressed with every new development. The one who had an interest in technology. But Steve had an interest in Bucky, and Bucky had a metal arm and that had to suffice for motivation. It did. It excelled motivation. Excelled obsession.

“You really don’t remember what they did with it?” Steve had asked after they’ve found enough peace and quiet --and boredom-- for another session some days ago.

“You mean if they changed batteries every couple of years?” Bucky had looked at him only a little annoyed.

“Maybe there’s a restart button,” Steve said. He was joking. But he still had hoped for one.

“They’ve always used these tools,” Bucky told him. “I don’t think there is a restart button. Maybe if you’d hook me up on a car battery.”

“I’m not going to electrocute you,” Steve argued.

“Why not?” Bucky had asked. “It could work. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe the only reason I’m still here is because of the shocks. Of the memory wipe. Maybe I need it. Who knows what they did to me.”

“You know, Buck,” Steve put a hand on his shoulder, “we just have to make you remember.”

Bucky shook his head. Thinking he couldn't? Saying he didn’t want to?

“Bucky,” Steve had tried again. “Please.”

“Why are you doing that?” Buck asked. Tension was building up inside him. Steve could tell by the look of his eyes. The hard line of his upper lip. The teeth behind it, threatening like a dog's snarl. He’ll bite. He’ll bite and tear more parts out of you, Steve thought. He’ll infect the wound with his poisonous mouth. He’ll bite and leave you bleeding to death. The soldier is a beast. The ghost is a storm. The assassin is a killer. And yet the true horror story was buried in Bucky’s head.

But Steve was an archeologist now. He’ll dig as deep as he has to.

“Tell me, Bucky,” Steve had said again. “Tell me what HYDRA did to you.”

Silence. And Bucky’s breath. Angry. Fiery. And his empty eyes. His fearful eyes. More fear than Bucky clinging to the side of the train on a bridge. More fear than Bucky realizing he’s known Steve right before he was going to kill him.

“What happened after they found you?” Steve asked. “After they took you to Siberia?"

Bucky shook his head again. Bearing his teeth again. Careful, Steve. Careful. “Why don’t we try electrocuting me first.”

It wasn’t a question. Bucky had made his decision.

Torture first, therapy second.

Torture first, memories second.

Torture first, Steve second.

Torture first.

“Fine,” Steve had said.

But it wasn’t fine. It hadn’t been fine then and it wasn’t fine now, with Steve trotting after the soldier. With Steve falling into step with the soldier. Steve reaching for the dead metal arm. Bucky doesn’t shrug him off.

Steve holds onto him for his own sake.

If only they had made more progress. If only they had made any progress. For better or worse. Although, the handholding had become obsolete, although Steve did in fact miss the proximity whenever they moved through a crowd, he couldn’t really complain about touching Bucky any less. Certainly not now with Bucky’s hand in his own, but neither in the privacy of their solitude. Their isolation. The opposite was true. 

The arm had become his playground.

Which is why Steve dreads whatever happens once they'll reach their hideout.

Only the soldier could walk home with war in his pocket. Only the soldier could stride and be his own prisoner.

Steve can’t. It’s killing him. Knowing what’s coming is killing him. He wants to hit pause. He wants to take a break. He wants time to reconsider. He wants more time to kiss more of Bucky’s body before he has to hurt it again. He wants to kiss the arm, the crook of its elbow and the inner parts of its wrist. Where Bucky’s veins would be. And his pulse.

He wants to kiss the underside of its biceps, feel with his lips if the metal there, like skin, was so much more vulnerable and private. 

He wants to kiss the arm where it meets Bucky’s skin. Over his fourth rib. His fifth. Just below the curve of his chest, only a blink away from the darker skin around his nipple. Rays of scars leading the way of his mouth. Smooth skin til the soft dip in the muscle underneath. Until hardened skin from the cold or the touch of Steve’s tongue. Steve wants to make a place for himself there. Between metal and scars and the beat of Bucky’s heart. He wants to rest his head there. For a moment, for a night, for a century.

But time passes and once they are back in just another place to lay low, just another stop they’ll pass through, Bucky puts the taser gun on the table and strips the glove off. Takes his sweater off. Then his undershirt. Almost mechanically, he places a chair in the middle of the room. And then he sits down. Broad stance, legs spread and with his shoulders pulled wide. He holds onto the metal wrist behind his back. Nodding to the taser.

Waiting for Steve to shoot him.

But Steve’s palms are clammy, not a single steady joint on any of his fingers.

One time, Steve had managed to make Bucky’s left ring finger twitch while he was probing around the inside of the arm. Steve had almost lost it then, had almost started crying. Over the sheer amount of hope he was suddenly able to encompass. Able to experience.

“How did you do that?” Bucky had asked, staring at the arm in utter fascination. The same look, the same expression of wondrous impression he had on his face almost seventy years ago.

Steve couldn’t hold back then. He had laughed. With tears in his eyes, but he had laughed.

“Remember the flying car?” he had asked Bucky who nodded. Who had smiled in return. The same old smile that Steve thought lost in war and snow.

“It was the best thing I’d ever seen,” Buck had said.

The best thing Steve had ever seen was that very look on Bucky’s face. Of astonishment and awe. And curiosity. Almost lusting for life. It made Steve jealous of life, as he wanted nothing more in that moment than to be the cause of that look. To be able to recreate it whenever he wanted. He’d just had to be there. He’ll always be there.

That look was Steve’s entire world.

“What are you waiting for, Cap?” Bucky asks, forcing Steve to leave his own memories behind. “That’s about all I’m going to take off.” He smirks, because he was a jerk. He watches Steve blush. He could have joked about Steve blushing and Steve would have laughed.

He would have laughed although he wouldn’t find it funny at all. But he made it a habit to humor Bucky whenever he could. He’d nod at every single one of his little remarks. He’d smile. He’d counter with a little snark. 

The only times he didn’t humor him, couldn’t humor him, was when Bucky remembered things wrong.

“I can’t believe you kissed Peggy and her niece,” Bucky had said one time.

It was true, so at first Steve had grinned and shrugged but then he remembered that Bucky couldn’t have known about his kiss with Peggy.

“It was in that bar,” Bucky told him after Steve had asked him which one he was referring to. “Oh come on, Steve,” he had even said. “You must remember her in that red dress. And then you danced and kissed her.”

“I never learned how to dance,” Steve had answered, his heart feeling heavy. About Peggy. About Bucky. About everything. About his own life that was altered so irreversible. A whole life that was lost. Whether he was still alive or not.

Bucky frowned. “I remember being jealous of you,” he said, causing Steve more hurt. “She was so beautiful that day.”

“She was always beautiful,” Steve had said in return, wondering why he wished Bucky would have said that he was jealous of her.

After all, he had been lucky that she had liked him as much as she did. As much as he had liked her himself. Steve did have something to envy. He and Peggy did.

Hadn’t Steve been as jealous of Bucky as much as the girls Bucky had danced with? Had kissed and lead out into an alley. Where he’d drop to his knees to worship these girls in ways no one else Steve knew ever did. Ever talked about. Except for Bucky. Because he loved them. All of them. And he was brave enough to act like it. They were lucky. And Bucky was lucky. And Steve had been burning and bursting with jealousy. With envy. Every single minute before going to war. Jealous of Bucky’s women. Of his assignment.

“Did it make you humble?” Steve had asked, losing track of the original problem. Of Bucky’s twisted memories.

“It made me thankful,” Bucky had said. His words didn’t make much sense to Steve.

“Of the pre-serum years you could roam without competition?” Steve asked.

Bucky gave him a look. An almost smile. An almost wink. There yet not there.

“Seeing you happy,” Buck just said.

Steve nodded. The idea of humoring him again was right there. The idea of saying 'It was a great night’. The idea of saying 'It was a great kiss’. But he couldn’t bring himself to lie at Bucky.

“You must have been drunk,” Steve told him instead.

When Bucky looked down and to the side, Steve could see the doubts he had planted. The memories had betrayed Bucky.

The more it happened, the more Bucky kept to himself. The less he shared. Double checking the memories before he spelled them out. Or being deliberately vague, waiting for Steve to tell him what happened. It was awful. But lying to him was worse.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Steve asks again. He takes a look at the taser but refuses to grab it.

“It’s worth a try, Steve,” Bucky says, then he stretches his arms out behind his back. Pulls the metal arm back with the other until the knuckles on his good hand crack. Then he rolls his head, stretching his neck.

“Did you feel anything when they worked on the arm? With the tools?” Steve asks quickly. This time, he does grab the taser gun. Treats it with more caution than they handle all of their other weapons. They’re not used to pointing them at the other. Steve isn’t.

“Maybe. Sometimes.” Bucky looks away. Steve knows that ‘maybe’ means ‘yes’. And that 'feeling something' probably translates to ‘it hurt’.

“Did it ever stopped working before?” Steve wonders.

“I don’t remember,” Bucky tells him. “Maybe.” Steve thinks, he remembers just fine. But he doesn’t share with Steve what Steve can’t confirm. All of his missions have turned into 'Maybe’s. Every single hour with HYDRA had turned into an 'I don’t remember’.

Natasha could confirm. If Steve had taken Bucky’s file with them, he may have been able to confirm. Now all Bucky was left with was doubts.

“What if the shocks impact your memory?” Steve asks. “What if you’ll lose them again?"

“You’ll bring them back,” Bucky just says as if it’s no big deal. As if it’s just a friendly turn. A casual favor. As if Steve was Bucky’s diary. That he could just open and re-read. Remember through. As if Bucky was Steve’s backup copy. Copy and paste. Copy and paste. Copy and paste. No big deal. What’s mine is yours. Ours. Past and present and even those years that were stolen. Both of us asleep. Me asleep and you on missions. You killing and me dying. Me killing and you dying. Both of us trying to kill the other. And then save the other. Down the line. Down to the end of the line. Down the road and on the run. Copy and paste. Rinse and repeat.

“Look,” Bucky starts again when Steve doesn’t move. “You can shoot this thing at me now or watch me do it myself in thirty seconds. Your call.”

This, the taser, was still better than the car battery, Steve reminds himself. Him shooting was still better than Bucky shooting this thing just half an arm length from his body.

“Put your shirt back on,” Steve tells him. “This isn’t like the times when people were still hooked to a metal gutter, Bucky. These bullets go into your skin and get hooked. They’re not really supposed to go into your body. They're supposed to cling to your clothes.”

“Yeah but I assume they’re more effective like that,” Bucky says and shrugs. “It’s not like we’re normal people, Steve.” He tilts his head, looking back almost fondly. “Come on, Rogers. It’s not the same as when they did it. When Zola did his experiments on me. It’s different if it's you.” Hearing Bucky say these words lowers Steve’s defenses significantly. Lowers his resistance. Unlocks his complicity in prioritizing the arm. Prioritizing the functioning soldier. For now, he swears to himself. Only for now.

It also doesn’t slip past Steve that Bucky felt brave enough to share again. To trust him. Or maybe he just gives Steve in order to receive. Trading a memory for a bullet. A memory for a wipe.   

“I don’t like this,” Steve says, carefully looking for signs of fear in Bucky. Can’t find any.

“Come on, Steve. The longer this take-” Bucky starts but by the 's’, Steve’s already got the gun up and pointed at Bucky’s chest. No move, no flinch, no flicker of surprise in return.

And then Steve pulls the trigger, closes his eyes and tries to block out Bucky’s suppressed scream, his teeth and his bite and his cramping jaw. The metal hitting the back of the chair as his arm falls to the side. The other forced to let go of his wrist. The soles of Bucky’s shoes dragging over the floor, his body trying to twist from the highjacking of his nervous system.

And then a couple of seconds later only silence. And Steve opens his eyes, feeling heavy with guilt despite everything. Bucky bleeds where the bullets hooked themselves under his skin. One on his chest and one a little lower, just over his stomach.

Bucky looks exhausted, look on his face dazed and disoriented. It makes Steve hesitate to go over. If the soldier felt threatened, he might lash out. And Steve’s tired of fighting. Tired of the pain and the violence. So he waits. Minute after minute until Bucky’s eyes focus on him.

“Compared to the wipe this was a walk in the park,” Bucky says and grins. Before he frowns and then turns his head to the left to look down the metal arm. Steve follows his gaze, his heart beating with anticipation. Nothing around the biceps, nothing around the elbow. Nothing around the wrist. Steve can feel his own disappointment taking hold of him, before his eyes drop to Bucky’s fingers. One by one they start to move, metal segments realigning. It’s barely audible, but Steve would have sworn later, he could hear every single movement. Every single piece awaken from paralysis.

A harsh breath escapes Steve’s lungs, his chest relieving itself of some long building tension. And then a smile spreads between his cheeks.

“Is that you?” he asks, raising his eyebrows, nodding towards Bucky’s hand.

“Yeah,” Bucky says as flabbergasted as Steve. He goes for a thumbs up, or what would have been a thumbs up if Bucky could lift his arm. Which he visible tries but fails completely. Then he uses his own hand to pull the arm up by the wrist again, showing Steve how he can flex his fingers. “That’s still progress, right?” Bucky asks and Steve keeps smiling at him. Because he too wants to believe in progress.

It doesn't take long though before both of them have to further lower their expectations of arm related progress. Steve steps up to retrieve the taser bullets, carefully pulling out the hooks from Bucky’s skin. As he works, he already notices the tremor out of the corner of his eyes. Bucky’s fourth and fifth finger,  the metal pinky and ring finger, twitching, oscillating, rubbing against each other slightly but noticeable that Steve wonders if Bucky can feel the vibrations in his shoulder.

Steve doesn’t bother to stare, because he can sense it would make Bucky feel even worse. He can sense neither of them wants to address the setback. Neither of them wants to address that they may have done what they did for nothing. Cause Bucky pain for nothing. Share memories for nothing. Sentimentals. That they've opened up to each other, have allowed the other to elicit hope. For nothing.

A mirror tremor starts up in Steve’s own fingers, ghosting over Bucky’s skin, brushing through thin lines of blood. Stressed electronics wherever one turns. He stands between the V of Bucky’s spread legs, bending down to tend to the small puncture wounds. They’re head to head on eye level. Space between them limited, air between them vibrating, thickening, flowing and whirling. From hooded looks and drawn out breaths. From unspoken worries. And Steve’s unspoken heart.

Steve meant to ask, but even before he gets a word out, he’s already got a hand on the metal shoulder. And then he figures that Bucky would probably tell him to get lost if he did mind the touch. And then one hand becomes two, feeling along the metal arm as if he was massaging a tense muscle. Down and down over elbow and forearm. And then Bucky opens his palm, fingers stretched out and spread wide, baring his hand to Steve’s touch.

The gesture disarms Steve completely. Torn between taking it as a display of trust and a display of compliance, Steve’s composure shuts down. Giving into his own overwhelming urge to reciprocate something, anything, he crouches down, bows to Bucky until his lips rest on the metal of his open palm, kissing the inside of his hand in his own submission.

Only registering what he did just now, --what he always did in the past week when helplessness takes him over, reverting to kisses instead of words, to touch with his lips when fingertips weren’t enough, when tender was yet too hard and gentle wasn’t suffice to heal--, registering it then, Steve is about to pull back when he feels Bucky’s thumb stroking over the far end of his jaw, just under Steve’s ear.

Steve shuts his eyes as tight as they would go, breathing in the metal scent, inhale, exhale, more Bucky than blood this time, more Bucky than guns this time, more Bucky than war this time.

He doesn’t mind placing himself into Bucky’s palm. He doesn’t mind staying for a while. Staying like this for a while. With Bucky stroking his face with a metal thumb, almost painfully loving.

Steve clings to Bucky’s elbow, not ready yet to separate them, to pull back or move on.

He allows some tears to escape. Despite his fears that the salt will cause damage to the arm. How many drops are too many? How many until they seep into the depths of the metal flesh. The metal tendons. The metal bones.

Steve surrenders to all his urges, all his heart as he starts to kiss Bucky’s palm again, all the segments on each finger. It consumes him, his mouth on the metal. 

The next time he halfway comes to himself, he realizes Bucky had brought his good hand on the back of Steve’s neck, fingers in his hair. Steve feels being watched but finds that it doesn’t bother him. The contrary is true. He wants Bucky to see. He wants to fall apart as he falls to his knees, following his mouth along Bucky’s arm until he reaches the crook of it again and then rests his hand against Bucky’s ribs, hiding his face between metal and skin. Shoulders hooked over Bucky’s thighs, hanging onto Bucky’s lap as he cries. Weeps. Breaks open and apart.

Captain America, ladies and gentlemen.

But it’s the first time in seventy years that Steve feels like his old self, that Steve feels like nothing more or less than Steve Rogers. Steve who loves Bucky. Steve who loves the soldier. Steve who is home where Barnes is written above the door, who is home in between the battle lines of back alleys. Knowing Bucky’s just around the corner and if not around the corner than just a couple of blocks away, waiting for him. Some ice stolen from the freezer truck and a hand made for the curve of Steve’s shoulder.

The curve of his shoulder where Bucky has moved his hand by now. Not the same, Steve thinks. The same hand but not the right shoulder. The new shoulder, the wrong shoulder, the captain’s shoulder.

When Steve tears his cheeks from the warmth of Bucky’s flank, from the life of Bucky’s flank, when he looks up, gaze blurry, eyes wet, open mouth and flushed cheek, Bucky’s already there, head ducked down to take the apology right from his lips. Apologies and desperation. And a century worth of guilt.

And for the first time, Steve is ready to give them up. With Bucky’s kiss hitting him harder than vita rays and a plane crash. Hitting Steve with the full force of the feelings he denied himself for far too long. Bucky pulls him in, hand slipping back on the back of Steve’s neck. Steve whines, coming apart all over again under the heat of Bucky’s lips, the firm press of his kiss, tender and soft and so fucking late, so fucking alive, so overdue and yet way too rushed. To soon for Steve to cope.

Any time would have been too soon, any time would have been too late, any time would have been the wrong time because there is no time in which Steve and Bucky can figure this out without it amounting to a clusterfuck of pain and wasted days, wasted life and dreams forever lost.

Steve kisses back as if he was chasing his own pain back into his Brooklyn youth, back into the bloodstream of James Barnes, back into the echo of the rattling train wheels, into the abyss of unfair tragedies.

He swaps his apologies for a missing person’s report. Puts it right there, handing it over with his lips onto Bucky’s lips. Writing it out with his tongue onto Bucky’s tongue. Sealing it with the tip of his thumb, right there in the corner of his mouth, where Bucky likes to hide a smirk.

Take it, he thinks, or said it? Take it and let them know you were gone. And that you were missed every second of every day of every goddamn year that passed. The snow bled and my heart bled and my soul ached still in my sleep, and it hurt to miss you. To have you ripped out from under my fingernails, from under my teeth, from under my skin. Ripped out from under every part of my body that continued growing after I’ve met you.

Woven into my very existance, you were not just missing, Bucky. You were the inexplicable yearning that had the sea chase the moon and the wolves howl for its light.

Steve kisses as if he could reinsert Bucky into every hollow part of himself. So that if they’ll find his body one day, they’d be forced to sift his ashes and yet would be left with more metal than human remains.

It’s only Steve’s fifth kiss, but he seems to remember the technicalities from a different life. Seems to remember just how Bucky likes to be kissed, just how to match every press of his lips with his own. He seems to remember the back and forth from their banter and their heavy conversations, heartfelt and painfully sincere.

Bucky tastes like metal, but so does Steve having buried his mouth in Bucky’s hand. Maybe he had bit his tongue or the inside of his cheek when Steve shot him with the taser gun. Maybe that’s just what a cybernetic metal arm does to you. Maybe it seeps into your blood and tears and into your mouth and maybe he sweats metal before he sweats salts.

And maybe Steve likes it because it makes him forget that human bodies are fragile and that human bodies bruise and break and that souls can be taken through a single wound.

Maybe Steve likes it, because a metal hand holds on.

Bucky’s thumb still strokes over every patch of skin it finds. The back of Steve's neck, behind his ear, under his jaw. Steve hasn’t been touched like that since Sharon.

When Bucky pulls back, Steve feels bare and stripped and naked, nothing in his heart that can't be taken from his face. From his lips that taste like Bucky and salted tears, that taste like hope and resurrection.

He lingers, looking Steve over with the soldier’s gaze, cataloging his features for a mission report.

“You’re a strange one, Rogers,” Bucky says. Softly. Quietly. “That’s technically a weapon,” he reminds Steve with a glance to the arm.

Steve shakes his head. It’s not. It’s Bucky’s. “It’s you,” he tells him. Because it is. Steve doesn’t distinguish between the man and the machine. As long as a single part of Bucky breathes, Steve is going to love every part of him.

“You were never scared of getting yourself hurt,” Bucky says. His thumb has reached the skin over Steve’s cheekbone.

“You know what I’ve always been afraid of?” Steve asks. He feels tired. Worn out. For the first time, he feels the strain of the run. Of his own mind. That forced him to get Bucky away from everything. Away from them. “I’ve always been afraid that I’d die on a mission. With Tony or Clint. That I’d die and they’ll say about me that I lived a full life.” Absently, he strokes along the metal arm, his fingers taking in the outline of the surface. Like a fingerprint. Only for now though. Only until it’ll move again. Shift and change. Like a chameleon’s skin. Tending to the soldier’s needs.

“It wasn’t a full life,” Steve admits. “I’m different from them,” he adds. Confesses. “I’m alone. I’m a hundred years old but I’ve barely lived. There are things I’ve never done and things I’ve done too often. I’ve done too much and too little. I’m empty but I carry my own weight in guilt.”

Bucky watches Steve’s fingers move over his arm, watches for every change in Steve’s face. He can feel Bucky’s eyes on him. He can feel the soldier’s eyes on him.

Bucky mumbles something in Russian, quietly talking to himself. Most of the words for himself and only some for Steve.

“Don’t say that,” Steve says immediately. No, he doesn’t know any Russian. But he knows the word for winter. And he knows the word for longing. And although Bucky should be allowed to say whatever crosses his mind, Steve doesn’t want him to use those words.

“Winter sleep, winter dream,” Bucky says with a shrug. “And longing for spring.” He looks at Steve for a moment before he explains, “hibernation, Steve. Time to wake up.”

“I don’t think the arm is the problem,” Steve says, tilting his head to look it over once more. “It works just fine whenever I push the right buttons,” he adds although there are no buttons. But the electronics react to stimulation. In the course of the past days, they’ve moved, --aside from all of the fingers--, the parts on the back of his hand. They’ve moved the parts on the wrist. The elbow. Only Bucky can’t do it by himself.

Steve had come to the suspicion a couple of days ago. But he had been too cowardly to tell Bucky. To share his thoughts. Because eventually what it all boiled down to was the conclusion that if the arm wasn’t the issue, Bucky was.

And if Bucky was the problem they had to finally tackle his trauma in a more productive way than screaming it into the void.

Steve couldn’t shake the thought that even the malfunctions before hadn’t been caused by their fight with Tony, but by Bucky’s subconsciousness. It makes him feel worse thinking how easily he had dismissed the issue. How he had even taken advantage of the tremor in Bucky’s soul. Shaking his bones so violently yet so unnoticed that it was only the mechanical part of him that reacted to the distress.

Oh, how traitorous our bodies are, Steve thinks. How they neither show our age nor our pain. No wounds, no scars to testify to the battles.

“Well, it’s not working when I push the buttons,” Bucky says. “In here,” he adds, tapping against the right side of his forehead. Steve already misses the touch of his hand on his own skin.

But his silence speaks volumes and Bucky isn’t stupid.

“Oh,” he starts again. “You think there’s something wrong in here?” he asks, his finger still resting against his temple. “What? You think I have shell shock?”

“That’s not what it’s called these days, Buck,” Steve says gently.

“What is it called?” Bucky asks.

“Post traumatic stress,” Steve tells him, but Bucky just scoffs. Usually, Steve’s fond of his scoffing because it’s something so distinctive Bucky-like, so beyond order and command that Steve almost cherishes the sound. But not now. Because stubbornness is also very James Barnes and so is a decent amount of arrogance. A sense of being indestructible. The innate understanding that out of the two of them, he is the strong one. The protector. The one who consequently belongs in between fists and Steve. In between bullets and Steve. In between war and Steve.

“It’s common in soldiers,” Steve tries again. His voice softens. And warms. It melts. Because Steve isn’t usually allowed to talk about the soldier. Usually, he keeps it all to himself.

“Do you have it?” Bucky asks, drawing on child-like logic. Not incorrect. Not simplified. Just interchanging correlation and cause.

“I’ve had the serum,” Steve just says.

“And that makes you immune?” Bucky wonders.

Yes, Steve wants to say. Yes, it does, but then he hesitates. Falters. Fails. And blurs.

Does it?

Steve frowns, thinking back of his days before Bucky. Before the Winter Soldier. Thinking back of his nights before Bucky came home to him. Thinking of the disconnect. The shallowness. The neglect that his body could never show.

And then the days after the soldier. After Bucky came home to him. Bucky who he cannot give up to those who want to hurt him. To those coming for him. To get him or retrieve him. To cage him and torture him. To those trying to take Bucky from him. To Sharon, to Tony, to anyone.

To them.

HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D.. Hydra and Shield. Hydra or Shield. One or the other. One as the other. Does it matter? One of them. Any one. Anyone.

All of them.

All of them are coming to take him.

Everyone.

Everyone is coming to take him.

They’re coming. They're coming to take him.

And Steve feels sick. He feels dizzy and nauseous and a million miles from Bucky. A hundred years from Bucky.

They’re coming. They’re coming. They’re coming.

They’re going to take him and Steve won’t be able to do anything about it.

They’re coming.

They’re taking him.

Are they coming? Is anyone coming?

They’re coming.

Steve knows. He knows and he sweats. Cold sweat, because they’re coming.

They’re coming. To take him.

They’ve taken him.

“You’re not sure, are you?” Bucky asks, his words barely seeping through as Steve tries to listen to him through a dull panic. Through a shrill ringing in his ear. Hissing and buzzing and piercing. Has it always been there?

“Steve?” Bucky asks, watching him carefully. Attentively. For how long? Just now? Or minutes? Or is he nothing but an afterimage. Nothing but a memory? Or the afterimage of a memory?

Didn’t they take him?

“You got that thousand yard stare, buddy,” Bucky says, but even his gentle teasing can’t hide the concern in his voice. It reaches for Steve. Bucky reaches for Steve. Steve reaches for Bucky. No metal arm. Just a metal train.

Someone is trying to pull him back. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

But they’ve taken him.

And he’s slipped. He slips. His hand slips.

It’s called dissociating now, Buck, is what Steve wants to tell him. He laughs at him behind a screen of a different life. Where none of them died.

But they both died.

And now he can’t tell him. He’s falling. Into panic. More sweat, cold sweat, no breath.

He can’t speak. Mouth dry, throat dry, mind dry.

Hands numb. Heart pumping. War drums.

Back in time. Buck in time. Bucky.

They took him from Steve.

Did Steve hold on? Where was the metal arm? Where was Steve when they took him? Where was Steve when he fell?

He was there.

He took him. They took him. He gave him to them. He made him fall.

Easy, Steve, he thinks to himself.

Stand easy.

He takes a slow breath, dragging air into his lungs as if he just lit a cigarette between his lips. But the air is cold and his lungs freeze and Bucky died. They were both dead, frozen and asleep.

‘At ease, Soldier,’ Fury had said. But that was after they had taken him. Forward in time but without Bucky.

At ease. At peace. In peace.

No peace without Bucky.

Rest in peace. Rest in parts. Parade rest.

Panic rest.

Paralysis.

Is Bucky safe?

Paralyzed. Paralost. Paranoid.

Para-void.

No Parachute.

He fell.

Avoid making noise, soldier. Avoid harm, soldier. Avoid capture.

Avoid capture at all cost.

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Para-noise. Paranoia.

They came, didn't they?

They took him.

Steve’s entire body starts shaking, kneeling still between Bucky’s thighs, but his mind can’t hold onto what his fingers cling to.

Bucky can’t keep him in the present. Not as panic takes hold in every one of Steve’s bones.

What are your trigger words, soldier?

Longing...

 

What are your trigger words, Captain?

Longing...

 

Longing, rusted, nineteen forty-five.

Daybreak. Train tracks. Time travel.

Fascists, forthcoming, falconry.

Assemble.

 

Assemble...

 

Ready to comply.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

When Steve wakes up, he’s in bed. Over the covers instead of underneath and with his shoes still on. A still shirtless Bucky right there next to him. Like when they were still boys. Like when they slept in their clothes after the first night they got drunk.

That was the same night Steve had picked out Bucky’s laugh from across the bar. Under a hundred voices. The first night Steve had felt it in his toes when Bucky bumped their shoulders. The first night Steve had slept with his hand between his knees, scared he wouldn’t keep himself from touching Buck in his dreams. When he had woken up that next morning though, it was Bucky’s hand buried in Steve’s hair and his foot underneath Steve’s ankle. It was that morning that Steve realized they weren’t kids anymore. And that life would catch up with them.

And it did.

It did and it came in a war.

Disorientation lasts for only a second, then the sensation of what Steve vaguely remembers as a hangover takes over. The sensation of sore muscles the first day of a cold. The sensation of the aching head the morning after another back alley fight. It’s all there, muffled and dull like the fading memory of a dream. And then Steve remembers his racing heart. The dry mouth. And Buck’s question.

'Do you have it?’

Buck who’s lying on his stomach, eyes closed and body still. His face right there where Steve can steal another glance. Or another long look. He loves the contrast, dark hair over pale skin. Did the soldier ever had a chance to linger on a sunny day? Warm his face in the light?

Probably not. Most of the soldier’s days were dark. Dark as the hair of his lashes. Of his brows missing the blue of his eyes now. Dark as the hair growing around his chin and along his jaw, right around the rosy color of his lips. The color of his lips.

His lips.

That Steve kissed not long ago.

Those lips where Steve had written his life on. His hopes. Those lips that gave him life where he was long dead.

And suddenly Steve would swear his own cheeks the color of Bucky’s lips. And not just his cheeks but the back of his neck, and all the skin around his collar bones.

The memories don’t just replay in Steve’s head, they replay in the drop of his stomach, down and down as if towards the moving train again.

But this time Bucky made it out alive.

As Steve runs the tips of his tongue over his own lips, looking for a trace of Bucky, he wants to replay the memory with his body instead of his thoughts. He wants to act it out. Bucky’s lips against his own, tip of his tongue aching to be met with the same urgency. Steve wants his hands in Bucky’s hair, wants the pressure of the kiss echoing against his teeth, the ghost of Bucky’s snarl. Of Bucky’s bite.

He wants it down his throat and over his chest. He wants Bucky’s grip on his wrists and all over his thighs. He wants Bucky to do him like the soldier did him during their first time. Their first fight. Push him and push him down. Hold him down. Do things to him. Angry and cruel and with intent.

He wants to be Bucky’s prey and succumb this time. He wants to come apart. Come undone, go under. Come under the wheels.

He wants to come.

Thinking of Bucky made him hard. Like that first night. Not without shame but without remorse. Love is one thing. Love is the traitor. But sex? Sex is the assassin. The executioner. The last face you’ll see on your way down. Sex is guiltless yet cruel. It’s wanting without committing. It’s selfish. Steve’s wanting is selfish.

But his entire body is too exhausted to fight its own reaction. And Steve doesn’t even want to fight it.

There was no time for fantasies for Captain America either. No time for self indulgence. There was no time for any self induced pleasures. Somewhere the world was always burning. And there is no time for sex when you’re part of a much bigger machine.

Did the soldier have time for self-indulgence? For these particular physical needs? Bucky said he’d still feel the urge. He’d still be aroused. He just didn’t know what to chase. What he wanted.

Steve knows what he wants.

He wants to claim ownership of the soldier. And use him as his captor. He wants to force Bucky, to force him. He wants to force Bucky to conquer him. And he wants his being Bucky’s to be his only purpose.

He’s halfway there anyway.

He’s halfway past halfway.

He wants for Bucky to want him back. Now.

But Bucky’s chest rises and falls softly. Almost peaceful. Unaware of Steve’s selfish thoughts.

Who wants to put his body under for a while and wants to use Bucky for a drug.

Steve watches him, painfully aware of the weight between his own thighs. Yet, he hesitates to act on it, relishing in the dissatisfaction of the unmet arousal. In the involuntary restraint of an urge that by its very nature rejects stalling. That rejects pausing. Steve likes it. It teases him to the brim of despair. Holding out.

There’s nothing that Steve Rogers is better at than holding out.

The metal arm lies between them, just as still as Bucky, just as heavy as the rest of Bucky’s sleep pliant body. Just as warm too? Just as sensitive?

Steve scoots lower just as as much as he scoots closer, quietly and smoothly, until he’s eye to eye with Bucky’s hand. By now his fingers don’t tremble anymore when he reaches for the metal. He lets the tips brush over the back of Bucky’s hand so lightly, he barely feels a pattern at all.

Unlike skin, the segments don’t move when Steve drags his fingers over the metal with more intent the next time. In their motionless state, they function as a shell, protecting the electronics inside.

The metal’s cold. Not uncomfortably cold, though. Rather, and rather surprisingly, refreshingly cold for Steve’s heated touch.

Because he can’t change who he is deep inside, Steve nudges the tip of his nose in the small crook of Bucky’s pinky. Between metal and sheets. Right where the second knuckle would be, if Bucky’s metal arm had bones.

He breathes in the familiar scent and frowns over just how familiar it had become. Over how his body reacts to it. Nerves stirring in all the hidden places. He frowns over his own need to gather all his senses and hide them there for a sparser winter. He doesn’t know why he frowns. After all, there's no surprise there really.

The frown turns into more of a grimace a second later anyway, when Steve feels his throat closing from tears that well up in his eyes.

He can’t quite grasp nor less contain how much he wants this. How much he really really wants this. This. With Bucky.

His body falls short on all accounts of keeping to itself. Weepy and horny, twitching thighs but two determined hands seeking anything but skin this morning.

Steve’s fingers close around Bucky’s wrist and when he lifts it, he’s surprised to find that the arm yields. Moves where Steve wants it.

And where Steve wants it, is on his throat. Under his jaw. Chin braced against the curve between Bucky’s thumb and the fingers on the other side of Steve’s neck.

Steve lets himself feel the weight of the arm against his windpipe. The hand cools the flushed skin, but does nothing to cool him down below.

Maybe this is how he’ll do it, allow his other hand to travel down his shirt, get a grip around his cock and chase his own relief. Maybe this is more than an opportunity. More than a sick fantasy. Maybe this is how he wants it. This, with no need for excuses or justification. No apologies.

“Weird one, Rogers,” Bucky says one side of his mouth still pressed against the mattress. When Steve had jerked his head to face him, startled by the sudden word, his eyes were still closed. Are still closed now, so Steve steals another glance. Of Bucky’s lips against the sheets, white fabric against rosy skin and behind it a perfect row of white teeth. “You’re a weird one,” Buck says again, still not bothering to crack an eye open.

Steve has nothing to reply. No excuses, no apologies. 'I want what I want,’ he wants to shrug it off, but he doesn’t just want what he wants. What he wants? He wants to ruin him. He wants to suffocate on what wants. Swallow obediently until he drowns in what he wants. He wants to lose control of what he wants and wants what he wants to control him.

Steve doesn’t just want. His insides tear at the thought of what he can’t have, of what he can’t make his own. Call his own. Call his home. His heart aches, his soul aches, every last one of his bones causes him pain at the thought of the things that are beyond possession. Some lives can’t be contained in one soul. And Steve’s had picked Bucky for a host. 

Bucky, who may still be half asleep, yet the soldier knows his surroundings. And what the soldier knows, Bucky knows. Memory loss or not. Does Bucky know? About the salt in the air, from the tears? The precome?

As if reading his every thought, Bucky draws his fingers together. Not threateningly tight but with just the right pressure. It pulls a whine right out of Steve’s hungry chest and through his pair of dry lips.

He tilts his hips, trying to get some friction from the jeans. He clings to Bucky’s arm with one hand, holds it up and keeps it in place because he knows Bucky can’t do it alone. He doesn’t know if Bucky would do it on his own if he could, though. If he’d even wanted to.

The other hand’s free though, and Steve groans at the prospect of his own touch. If Bucky didn’t know before, he knows now. But instead of pulling away, he moves his thumb along Steve’s jaw again. Just like the night before, the effect not at all lessened by the repetition. It makes Steve shiver and sends his stomach down the rope again. Down and down and this time, both of them make it out alive.

“Don’t,” Bucky whispers, breathes, moans. And Steve feels the ghost of the soldier’s lips against his cheek, telling him the opposite.

'Move.’

Yes, Steve nods. To the words of the ghost. Kinship in mischief. But his hand refuses to follow the soldier’s order. It takes Bucky’s side, lingering just over Steve’s sternum.

Traitor.

When Steve looks up the blue of Bucky’s eyes is back. Between dark brows and hooded lids. Strands of dark hair over the pale skin of his neck, over the flushed skin on his cheeks.

‘Traitor’, Steve thinks again, right before, ’what the fuck are we doing, Buck?’

He must have said the latter out loud, because Bucky grins, viciously and tempting, seductive and dangerous. Kryptonite not just to girls in 1940 but to Steve Rogers. Then and now. Now. Especially now.

Does Bucky know? Can he tell by the pink shades underneath Steve’s skin, by his blushy cheeks? By the lack of finesse in Steve’s empty thrusts, by the look of Steve’s eyes, starving and pleading? Does he know that this is how far Steve had ever come? That this is how far he’s ever gone?

That all of his fantasies are birthed in their own realm and not tainted by the hands of someone else? Not the lips of someone else. Not the touch of someone else. That his entire fucked-upness wasn’t build on boredom or some getting-used-to-the-regular-thing? Not build on conquest or competition? That instead, it was entirely Steve’s?

Steve who, for no other reason than his own desire, wants Buck’s hand on his throat. Who, for now other reason than his own desire, wants for Bucky to hold him down. To bruise him as if he’d still bruise.

Captain America didn’t have time for sex. Captain America has no authorization for kinks. He doesn’t have moments of intimacy.

The only intimacy Steve has ever known was his friendship with Bucky.

Bucky, who’s still looking back at him, still smirking, still teasing, but gently. Loving even.

Was this love? How stupid to even ask this question. And how stupid was Steve to even think that word.

But he can’t look away. Not from Bucky. Not now that they’re here. Wherever here is. Whatever here is.

There’s a moment in which Steve wonders if there is a right way to do this. A right way to do anything about this. He wonders if he could lose the shoes in a subtle way. He wonders if there’s a way to unbuckle his belt, open his jeans without moving his hand. He wonders if there’s a definite rule about where sex begins. Or if there’s a way to tell how far they’re from it. He can’t help but assume Bucky would know better. Having experience and all.

The soldier couldn’t remember losing his virginity. The soldier was more innocent than Steve. Steve remembers Bucky losing his virginity. He remembers Bucky telling him. He remembers it tearing his soul. Although Steve didn’t know why then.

The soldier doesn’t discriminate between genders. The soldier doesn’t have preferences, Steve recalls. The soldier only knows needs.

But Bucky?

Did Bucky kiss him because he knew where this was heading? Because this was where he wanted it to head? Does Bucky care where things go as long as they go his way?

After all, Bucky loves how Captain America loves.

Everyone a little.

But Steve loves how HYDRA loves. Relentless and without mercy. Up until the point of domination. And only then would it suffice. Only once he was someone’s entire world.

Not his proudest realization but his most honest one yet. Some loves cannot be contained to one soul. They must seize another.

Steve swallows, feeling the metal resistance on his throat. He loves it. He tilts his head, he wants more of it.

“Steve,” Buck calls for him gently. A distraction, not an encouragement. Does he know how desperate Steve has become? Painfully desperate.

“You kissed me,” Steve just says, voice a little too hoarse to be helpful. He keeps looking up at Bucky, keeps focusing on the blue between the dark and the pale. It keeps him from thinking.

“I kissed you,” Buck tells him, he shrugs, but the waves of his movements don’t even reach Steve’s hand on the metal elbow.

“Do it again.” Steve’s heart hammers as he speaks. When did he become so frightened of his own bravery?

Buck scoffs at him again. He’s cocky like that, Steve knows. Maybe it appeals to his arrogant side. Steve wanting him again. And him able to deny Steve just that.

A power the soldier never had. It makes Steve sympathize with the asset again. They’re both victims now.

The asset is pliant. The asset is compliant. Steve is compliant.

“What do you want, Buck?” Steve asks quietly. Hoping the 'Don’t’ was just a 'Not yet’. Hoping the 'Not yet’ was long expired.

He lets go of Bucky’s arm then, slips from its grip and rolls onto his stomach, scooting closer to Bucky once more. Scooting lower again too. His face on eye level with Bucky’s belt by now.

Wordlessly, Bucky had followed him with his eyes, not moving his body until Steve gives him a little nudge by the hips, rolling him on his back.

If Steve was expecting his move would reveal an equally hard bulge behind the zipper of Bucky’s jeans, Steve was mistaken.

Was this his answer about Bucky’s preferences? Or just a statement of insecurity?

Steve can’t know for sure about the life Bucky lived in Bucharest. Can't know about the absence of a love life. A sex life.

Maybe this was Bucky’s first time since 1945.

Steve’s fingers move without permission, without further consultation with his brain when they fumble with Bucky’s belt. When they open it, almost too quietly.

Bucky remains still, but his eyes are clear. And Steve doesn’t shy from catching them every other second. His own darting between belt and Bucky’s face. Between buttons and Bucky’s face. Between naked skin under an opened fly and Bucky’s face.

It’s the last time Steve looks up for reassurance, the last time before he closes his eyes and ducks his head down. His lips graze over soft skin and he kisses it. Kisses his way from soft skin to soft hair, and from soft hair to the soft skin of Bucky’s soft cock. And then he kisses it.

The scent of metal fades to nothing, replaced by intimacy far greater than Steve had ever known. When he opens his lips, it's not just to discover what intimacy tastes like, but he wants to offer his body to Bucky. Any part of him for any part of Bucky’s. No exceptions, no limitations, no rules.

Should there have been disappointment? In the lack of Buck’s own urgency? The lack of physical response?

There’s none. None in Steve. No disappointment. Because Bucky lets him.

And there’s no lack of response at all. There’s Bucky’s eyes that follow him with precision. Bucky’s eyes. Not the soldier’s eyes. The soldier plots when he stares. But Bucky, he just watches. And his breath fills Steve’s ears. Those breaths that go deep, past his chest. That make his belly rise and fall, so all encompassing that Steve feels him breathing, feels the up and down with the tip of his nose. Feels it where even the hard lines of the soldier fade. Vulnerable and human.

The lack of urgency is what calms Steve, taking Bucky in and wetting him all around. With his tongue pressed against the underside of Buck’s cock, he sucks on it gently, careful, just to get more of its taste. Just to guide his lips lower, until they’re right there at the base, until all of Bucky is where it belongs. Safe and looked after.

It might as well have been Steve’s imagination, his wishful thinking, the buzz of his own restless arousal spilling over, and yet Steve believes he can sense something very similar in Bucky now. In the tension of his right hand, the twitching fingers that Steve feels next to his own. The metal hand lies still though, which Steve takes as a sign that it’s not fear or stress or threat that makes Bucky uneasy. But his own wants and needs and fantasies.

Steve keeps his eyes closed and his lips wrapped around Bucky’s still soft cock, his tongue teasing along the base, his throat itching for more. For more Bucky on the inside and more metal on the outside.

It makes Steve even harder, his own cock aching. A storm down his waistband with the calm between his teeth.

It makes Steve dizzy.

It makes Steve feel bliss unknown even to Captain America.

It makes him want to do this forever, torturing himself with the lack of release. Holding out. Holding out for Bucky. So devoted, so patiently, so painfully open, mouth and heart ready to be filled.

There’s no use in wondering if he’s doing something wrong, if he could be better, do anything differently to help Bucky along. Because this is for him. He knows it. And Bucky knows it.

Maybe even Bucky’s cock knows it. Lets itself be moved in Steve’s mouth where all his little noises die out. The whining and moaning, the harsher breaths that find their way through his nose, right down on Bucky’s skin and the thick dark hairs. Burning hot and worked up over some soft dick. He must be crazy.

And maybe he was. And maybe there was something wrong with him. Maybe he was all that. Fucked-up and trauma infested. Dirt pooled up over the golden boy. Maybe he was worse than the bad guys. Maybe he was worse than the soldier, because the soldier didn’t know any better.

Steve could be with Sharon right now. Would she let him? Like Bucky lets him?

The tears are back stinging in Steve eyes, but he won’t move. He’ll hold onto peace with his mouth, hold onto Bucky with his mouth. This time he won’t fall.

He’s so far past himself that Steve barely hears Bucky’s groan, barely registers his mouth shrinking as Bucky swells. Hardens right on his tongue. Barely registers the weight that pushes against his throat.

Steve’s crying. Throat closing from Bucky’s cock, from the big lump of his tears, from the metal hand.

Now that Bucky found his arousal he’s relishing in it. He’s pushing against Steve with his whole body, pushing Steve down and against his body, metal arm sealing the connection with superhuman force.

And Steve takes it. Because this is for Bucky. And Steve had has his, so it’s only fair.

The scents mix, the tastes mix, salt and metal and the bitter tang. Skin on skin and saliva. Wet in Steve’s mouth and against his chin. Tears on his cheeks.

Bucky holds him down, he wants closer, he wants deeper. Steve shuts it all out. Bucky’s groans, Bucky’s breaths, his own breath, no room for breath.

The storm has reached him at last, so violent it knocks his lungs out, because his throat is full. His heart is full. And Bucky’s full.

Still.

Not for long.

Steve wants it all.

He lets himself fall against Bucky, holds onto the loose waistband of his jeans with both hands and looks up. A silent plea for Bucky to give to him. Give into him. Give him. Anything.

Bucky meets his gaze, eyes open, wide and wild. Maybe another realization in the middle of a fight. In the middle of an entirely different fight. ‘Fight me, Bucky’. ‘Fight me and fuck me,’ Steve pleads wordlessly. Eyes sore from the tears and the sharp angle.

Bucky shoots him a look, angry and stressed, breathless and raw before he shuts his eyes and gives. Gives Steve what he asked for.

Hot thick spurts of bitter salt against the back of Steve’s mouth, running down his throat as he tries to swallow. But his body is tired, his chest is tight, midriff cramping, aching for air just as much as Steve aches for Bucky’s come.

He doesn’t pull away, he couldn’t move off, not with Bucky holding him. Even if he could manage to build up twice the strength, he wouldn’t tear himself from Bucky’s grip. Never. Never again.

And Bucky holds him through the cramping, through the choking. Through the panicking breaths and through the coughs he suppresses. Although his lungs burn and his throat aches, he keeps Bucky’s softening cock in his mouth, close to his lips. Maybe he’s gagged once, maybe it slipped out twice, but Steve's tongue is quick, and his lips find Bucky even in panic and distress.

And Bucky lets him.

Lets Steve suck on his spent cock, lets him trace the ghost of his taste, tip of his tongue dipping into the slit, delighted to find a forgotten drop.

Minutes pass, long minutes pass. Infinite minutes pass, and Steve’s not sick of it yet.

Bucky’s grip softens soon, his touch so much more gentle then. He runs human fingers through Steve’s hair, over his cheek and under his jaw.

“Do it now,” he tells him, voice as tender as his touch. “Do it now,” he says again and Steve needs a moment to catch on.

Tentatively, he brings his palm over the bulge of his own cock, giving Bucky some time to object if that wasn’t what he meant.

But Bucky hums and Steve whines as he gives himself a little squeeze, just as tight as he needs it. He rubs himself through his jeans, bracketed between Bucky’s knees with his cock still in Steve’s mouth.

It’s heaven.

The urgency in between his legs, it echos in his toes and the tension in his lower stomach. It all aligns with Steve’s mind. With his shaking fingers splayed out over Bucky’s naked stomach.

It’s rough and it’s dry and it hurts a little. It’s uncoordinated and inexperienced. Would Bucky laugh at him? He doesn’t laugh. His voice is there, somewhere in the air and Steve’s makes an honest effort to catch it. “Move”, it says. And Steve nods. He moves against his hand, against the sheets, against the mattress.

“Good,” it tells him. “Fucking beautiful,” it says and Steve doesn’t even want to know if it’s Bucky or his imagination messing with him. Or not messing with him. Praising him, maybe. Is he good? Is he fucking beautiful?

Like this?

Rolled on his stomach, ass up, hips thrusting, spit on his chin? Come on his face? Dick between his teeth? And Bucky’s traces all the way down his stomach. Marking all of his insides with his initials?

When Steve’s orgasm hits him, it punches him right in the face. Forces him down against Bucky once more. Overwhelmed by shame and the mere need to hide as he buries his face in Bucky’s crotch. Helpless and desperate. Panting through his nose. Heel of his palm still pressing painfully against his cock, wringing the last aftershock out of his body.

It’s wet and gross but he’s wet and gross everywhere. His cheeks burn with embarrassment not about the picture he must present, but about how much he likes it. The stickiness in his jeans, the smell of sex that clings to him, head to toe, the taste in his mouth. The dick in his mouth.

What the fuck was he doing?

“Get up here,” Bucky tells him, voice a little harsher than before. He moves a hand on the back of Steve’s neck to put some emphasis behind his order.

With his head hanging low, Steve complies. Drags his body upwards, parting with Bucky’s cock only begrudgingly. He holds himself up on his hands, crawling towards Bucky’s voice and the blue of his eyes. He doesn’t know if Bucky would mind the contact otherwise.

But Bucky touches his face once he can see it better, runs the length of his thumb over Steve's chin and cheeks to clean him up a little. It itches Steve to avoid his gaze but he can’t bring himself to. He wants to see as much of Bucky for as long as he’s allowed to. He wants to take it all in.

“Let’s do it again then,” Bucky says. And even before Steve can manage a frown, he’s being pulled down into another kiss. Bucky’s lips right there on his own, with no regard for apologies or excuses either.

He kisses Steve’s lips, upper lip first, then his lower lip, and then both of them. Dragging his own over them until Steve’s opens up pliantly once more, until Bucky can part them with his tongue, seeking the touch of Steve’s. The taste of Steve’s.

Steve lets himself be kissed this time for far longer than possibly polite. But he likes it. He likes Bucky’s tender moments as much as he likes his hungry ones. He likes meeting his kisses and the tip of his tongue. He likes Bucky getting his. Bucky doing what he wants to first. And only later Steve kisses back with more confidence. With more demands of his own. More thirst for Bucky’s taste wherever he can retrieve it from.

It’s only when Steve feels it again, the metal under his jaw, right where he wants it, spiking another jolt of arousal, that Steve yanks his head back and tears his eyes open in shock. Only then that he recalls having felt the hand around his throat when he was still lying between Bucky’s legs.

“The arm,” he says, dumbfounded and ineloquently. Sitting up fully so he can get a better look, straddling Bucky in the process.

Bucky grins, raises his eyebrows and nods. “You said it yourself, right? That you thought the arm was fine. Or maybe it was the electroshock.”

“You can move it again?” Steve asks just to be sure.

“Like nothing happened,” Bucky tells him.

“No tremor, no spasm, no nothing?” Steve presses.

“I wouldn’t put my hand on your throat if I’d think it could kill you,” Buck says. “Only you are that stupid.”

And there it was. The inevitable callout. But instead of making him feel guilty or more shameful, it makes Steve smile.

“It was what you said though, right? You think the arm is fine,” Bucky reassures himself and Steve can tell it’s distracting him from the fact that he sure as hell could have killed Steve, if the arm had suffered from another malfunction. But Bucky even wiggles his shoulder to show Steve, and for once the arm responds. Translates the movement. Plates shifting smoothly like a snake’s skin again.

“Yeah,” Steve just says, reaching out for the arm to trace its forming patterns. “I think the arm was always good. I think it’s us, Bucky. I think, we’re malfunctioning.”

“So Captain America does have the shell shock?” Bucky wonders and laughs. Although both of them know there’s nothing funny about it.

“I told you that’s not what it’s called anymore,” Steve says. He’s only a little concerned with Bucky’s way to make light of the situation.

“You good?” Bucky asks. Checking in like any respectable soldier would.

Steve nods. Gives him a little salute. “You?”

“Peachy,” Bucky tells him and Steve begins to resent that word.

He must have noticed because with a gentle hand under Steve’s chin, Bucky tilts his head, locks their eyes. “I’m good, Steve,” he says. “Really good.”

Steve nods again, although he doubts either of them should say this. Not while their on the run. Not with their baggage in post-traumatic stress. Not after what they just did. After how they did it.

“What are we going to do now?” Steve asks. If only he did have a plan.

“Keep moving,” Buck tells him. “We keep moving, Rogers.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes apparently in this universe Steve is indeed familiar with kryptonite .... (please don't judge me)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it took me so long. And that this fic is going to be a little longer than I originally planned for.  
> Thank you for reading! Thank you for every kind word and every comment! Sorry I've been so late to reply to them too.  
> I updated the tags, so please check them out.

It had all started with a fight.

And as being on the run.

As running with Bucky.

Unconditionally.

It had since been staying with Bucky. Or making Bucky stay with him. Keeping Bucky from running even.

It had since been... Keeping Bucky. At all costs. Keeping him alive. Keeping him from HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D.. From the police. It has become Steve's only purpose. His sole mission. Keeping Bucky, keeping the arm, keeping himself. Keeping himself alive. Both of them.

But now, things had changes again. Things were different again. Not because Steve wanted it like that. It just happened. Like things always just happen to them.

"What did they do to you?” Steve asks. Quietly. Softly. With Bucky's face so close to his. With Bucky's body so close to his. 'What did they do to you?', because he doesn't want to ask 'What did they do to me?'

What they did to him? Bucky died and then Steve woke up when really he should have been dead too. Woke up like it was all a bad dream. But the nightmare continued. He didn't wake up to a better place. No, the world was still full of bullies. They were everywhere. Same shit, different century.

And then Peggy died. And there wasn't even time to grieve. What would he have to grieve anyway? A life he never got to live? Just more of Captain America's selfishness. 

Now, here, with Bucky - with Bucky on the run, it didn't matter what they did to Steve. So what if he wasn't functioning properly. None of what happened to him came close to what they did to Bucky. And whatever state Steve was in, it was still good enough to keep both of them alive. Here, what mattered here, was what they did to Bucky. What they would do to him. What they would do if Steve failed to protect him. Failed to keep him. 

And they were coming for them. Even if Steve had his moments of doubts, his moments of confusion, deep down he knew they were still coming. He could feel the unease crawling in his guts. He knew nothing was right. He knew nothing was going to be right unless they kept running. 

He could feel it in the air around them. It was everywhere. They were everywhere.

“What did they do to you, Buck?” Steve tilts his head just a little. Tries to make his question less threatening. More teasing. He was negotiating after all. Trading a touch for a truth. A memory for an inch of proximity. Face to face on an old mattress again. Tell me Buck, he thought. Tell me and I'll put my mouth where it hurts.

“You don’t wanna know,” Bucky tells him, leaning back just as much as Steve had moved forward. He wasn't having any of it. He wasn't going to give it away. To give it to Steve. Who was longing for someone else's truth. Who was longing to distract himself with someone else's pain. With Bucky's pain. It was the only one that could suffice. That could drown out his own. Could maybe, down the line, heal his own.

Tell it soldier. Tell it and be dismissed. Tell it and be relieved. Tell it and be discharged.

But Bucky wasn't going to tell him. Bucky was never going to be discharged. The soldier was never to be released.

Asking Bucky about his past was never a good idea. It was, for one thing, a surefire way to increase malfunctions in the arm. Because the arm was so much smarter than the flesh. It had so little resilience when it came down to it. It was bound to the soldier. To the health of the soldier. And the health of the soldier was bound to forgetting. To being wiped.

There were days when Steve thought he could tell Bucky's mood simply by the movements of the arm. The twitching. Or the slow response. Sometimes it was so much more gentle. On Steve's throat. Or maybe that was just Bucky's way of telling him. When he refused to tell Steve anything else. On those days when Steve swore the arm was trying to tell it to him. Answer all of his questions. About what they did. The arm and the soldier. If only Steve could translate what it was trying to say.

Asking Bucky what they did to him, was, for the next thing, also a surefire way to make Bucky retreat. Grow silent and shy.

It was the easiest way to coax the soldier back to life.

Between sundown and dawn. In the privacy of their shared heat. It was Steve's way of calling him when Bucky was playing coy with the arm. Full of shame and guilt and too scared that he could hurt Steve after all. When he wouldn't let Steve touch it as if it was innocent. When he wouldn't let Steve touch him as if he was still innocent. When he wouldn't let Steve worship him, when he thought he didn't deserved it. When he wouldn't let Steve kiss the skin on his right hand either. As if there was blood on it still. When he wouldn't let Steve rest his head on his chest. Ashamed of the heart that was still beating inside it. 

It was everything to Steve. The greatest sound that has ever echoed on earth. And at times the only thing that would get past his ringing ears, past the shrilling fear and the buzz of the run. 

Asking Bucky what they did to him, was, for the last thing, usually a surefire way to make Steve cry. Make him ball his fists in frustration. Make him shiver in fear. In the silence. Make him despair over the lack of answers. All this silence that never faded. That was never filled. The silence that weighed too heavy on his heart. On his shoulders. His own guilt that he was bound to carry. Just as long as Bucky would carry his. It was the silence that nurtured Steve's fear. His imagination that provided answers to the questions. Answers that were too painful for him to retain. And so Steve cried.

Bucky never cried.

But Steve couldn't blame him. He wasn't much of a crier himself in his youth either. Now he cried all the time. It was his body's way of keeping his panic at bay. It was Steve's body retreating to the release that wasn't tied to Bucky's body. That wasn't tied to the arm and the soldier. 

Crying was good. Yes, it hurt. It hurt in his throat and it hurt in his chest. It would tear him down and force him on his knees. But crying meant that there was sleep after the very last sob. That there was consolation. Somewhere. When Steve wrapped his own arms around his trembling shell. When he wiped his tears and buried his head in the pillows. There was consolation even in Bucky's silence. In his hands on Steve's shoulders. In the metal on Steve's throat.

Crying meant that they weren't dead yet.

That they hadn't found them yet.

That they hadn't succeeded in finding Bucky. In taking Bucky. In killing them yet. Hydra. And S.H.I.E.L.D. One or the other.

Steve can't remember the exact moment Bucky stopped worrying about them. Maybe he wasn't around then. Maybe he was out, securing the area. Checking for threats. He'd probably missed it anyway. Even if he had been there. Busy with his own fears. And his unanswered questions. What did they do to you?

There was a knife at the bedside table for so long. And always a gun within reach. On the mattress. On the sheets. Or next to Bucky when they slept on the floor. There was no need to check for it really. It was there. Had to be.

Then the gun was swapped for Steve's body, always in reach for Bucky's hands. Always Steve at night. No more guns. And then sometimes Steve during the day. Always in reach for Bucky's hand again. Both of them this time. Not just the metal arm. And the gun was moved into the bag, or the pocket of a jacket Buck never wore again. The knife remained for the longest time. Steve used to stare at it when Bucky slept. When he kept watch. He stared at it so that it would't go missing again. So that Bucky couldn't blame him again. For losing it. For misplacing it. For taking it from him. As if Steve could take anything from him. Night after night. Steve's eyes were on it. From the moment Buck put it down to the moment he picked it up again. In the morning. When Steve watched him sliding the handle through his fingers. Playing around with it. Watched it disappear underneath his clothes at some point. And Steve would still stare. Jealous and furious. Some restless desire burning in his chest. When he wanted to swap it too for his body. When he wanted to occupy the space alongside Bucky's flank. Or along his thigh. Along his ankle. No matter where Bucky hid the knife that day. He wanted to be cold metal too. And he wanted to be warmed by the heat of Buck's body. He wanted to leave an imprint on his skin. 

But the imprint faded and so did the knife and Steve can't for the life of him recall when he had seen it for the last time. One day, late in the evening, it was just gone from the nightstand and nowhere to be found on Bucky's body.

Steve knew then because he panicked. Did he lose it? Or had they been found? Was someone was stealing their weapons, preparing for a strike? He'd checked the windows first. The doors. Then Bucky's backpack. And his boots. Then he'd pulled on Bucky's clothes as Bucky struggled to push him off. 'What was wrong with him?' he had asked. What the fuck was wrong with him? There was nothing wrong with Steve. Maybe there was something wrong with Bucky.

Was Bucky giving up on fighting? Giving up on running? Was he just losing their weapons because he didn't care about anymore? About living or dying? Steve had another panic attack then. Broke down choking on his own cramps. His chest heaving and his throat collapsing. Tears on his cheek but Steve couldn't see anyway. It was all white dots and blinding terror. He had been shaking like he does so often these days. Heart hammering and sweat breaking. On his forehead and the back of his neck. The inside of his palms. He had pissed himself that day. And Bucky hadn't asked what was wrong with him since. 

But more weapons disappeared. More weapons from Bucky's sphere. And the more weapons went missing, the more Steve stocked up his own. He didn't care about the serum anymore. About his strength. His smarts. He was fighting for two now. He hadn't resigned yet. He was going to keep them alive.

And just like that, he was turning into the perfect soldier. And a compromised man.

But then it all came to an end.

"You don't need these," Bucky had said one night. "And I don't even want you to have these anymore." He'd picked up the gun from Steve's pillow and tossed it from the bed. Carelessly. Almost rude in his carelessness. The soldier would never, Steve thought. The asset would never.

And for a brief moment Steve was filled with nothing but resentment. For no one else but James Bucky Barnes. That cocky little shit from Brooklyn. That guy that was always good just on his own. Protecting his own. And Steve. Resentment for his stupid rules. And his stupid trust. And his stupid smirk. His arm that he didn't deserve. He was going to tear it off anyway.

Steve was protecting them now. He was protecting the soldier. And Bucky was becoming a liability.

"You don't need these when you're getting in bed with me," Buck told him. 

For the longest moment, Steve could just stare at the gun on the ground. Trying to sort through his thoughts. Figure out what Bucky already knew. What he had known for a while now. Ever since that first gun was gone. 

Somehow running with Bucky, keeping Bucky alive, had turned into staying with Bucky. Had somehow turned into being with Bucky. And somehow Steve -- Steve who loves Bucky -- hadn't been aware of that happening at all. There was no time for them to be. Together. Not yet, Steve had been sure of it. Not yet. It had to wait. Be delayed. It had to be postponed. For a better place. A more peaceful time. For a life after the run. 

But sleep wasn't just about getting rest anymore. About remaining functional. It was about being with the other now. And somehow Bucky had known before Steve had realized. They were getting in bed with the other now. Together. Apparently the bed had become a space with meaning. With meaning for Bucky. Being with Steve had meaning for Bucky. Meaning even if the bed was only a crappy mattress. And meaning even if the other was just a broken man. That had failed to noticed. 

"Okay," Steve had said then. Still looking at the gun. And then up to Bucky. A shrug. And a nod. Okay. 

They do not talk about what they do in bed. Bucky wants to and Steve knows that he wants to. But Steve wants to talk about the soldier in return. And what was done to him. But he can't. Not anymore. Not if he doesn't want to talk about his panic. Not if he doesn't want to know the questions Bucky would ask in return. So they don't talk. Not about what happened. And not about what they do. What Bucky thinks of him. And of his needs for the arm right under his jaw. And his mouth between Bucky's thighs. For far longer than the heat of the moment. The need for Steve's mouth anywhere on Bucky's skin. About his longing for metal and salt.

And how small was human longing anyway. How insignificant in relation to their pain. Their suffering. Anyone's.

But Steve's longing was all-encompassing. Was overwhelming and universally true. For Steve Rogers. For Captain America. He wanted Bucky more than he felt pain. More than he felt panic. 

Steve knew that the bed was their place for longing. That he needed to contain it during the day. Whenever they moved places. Whenever they had to be on alert. Watch out. But the way he longed for Bucky, yearned for him, was beyond space. It was everywhere under his skin and in every one of his words. Each and every one of his decisions was laced with his longing for Bucky. Every ache of his body was soaked in his need for Bucky.

It was, at times, so absurdly present, so constantly and clearly defined, that Steve struggled to see that there was a Bucky that existed outside of his own emotions. Outside of Steve's history. He struggled to accept that part of him existed outside of Bucky's history as well. That he was known more, maybe better, at least for a while there, by other people. By people who weren't Bucky. And that the same was true in reverse. Someone, even if only for a while, knew Bucky better than Steve. And that was the most unbearable thought of all. That people may have even loved him. Be loved by him. Natasha maybe. A different HYDRA agent? Someone in Bucharest? It tore Steve apart inside. It poisoned him. The idea that Bucky might have been happy without Steve. Content. With or without the memories. 

Steve hadn't been happy without Bucky. Steve had been dying without Bucky. He had been missing one of his vital organs. He had felt his own death when Bucky fell of the train. He had felt it being removed. Being violently torn from the softest core of his body. And he had been bleeding out ever since. 

Bucky's quiet most of the time. Steve's gotten used to it. He's gotten used to be being the one who wanted to scream. The one who wanted to cry. Who wanted to request. And demand. Only to hold back a second after. Hold out. Wait, delay and postpone. Again.

At night Steve holds Bucky. Because Bucky holds him before they sleep. Holds him in place. In place low on the mattress. In place between his thighs. With his mouth wherever Steve needs it. 

A one time thing, happening twice, then three times, then every night. Becoming a routine. Steve getting Buck off with his mouth. Then Steve getting himself off. With his hand. Either with Buck still on his tongue or a metal thumb between his teeth. Sometimes two metal fingers. Sometimes with the metal hand on his throat still, and with nervous thrusts against Buck's hipbone.

What they had at night, almost every night now, it had become -- for a lack of perspective, for a lack of predictable future -- the one thing Steve had started to look forward to. Each morning. Each day. 

That's who they were now. People with a routine. Two people with a routine. A couple with a routine. A couple.

"Was this your first time?" Bucky had asked after it happened that one morning. After Steve's first panic attack. After the miraculous resurrection of the arm. The one that wasn't miraculous at all.

What Steve had said? Nothing. A dismissive head shake. A shrug. A blink that lasted longer than necessary. He had rubbed his eyes while he was at it. Averting Bucky's gaze at all cost.

"Steve?" Buck asked again. He wasn't stupid. He knew. But if he knew, he shouldn't have to ask. And Steve shouldn't have to talk. Yes Bucky, I lost my virginity a hundred years after you. To you. Why should he have to spell it out. What good would it do. What good, if Bucky knew anyway. By his silence. Silence was all their answers now.

Maybe that's why Bucky let him a second time. That night. Let Steve repeat the whole thing. Letting Steve suck him off. Suck him dry. Letting Steve be choked. Gently. Just a little. By the metal arm. Even the tears reprised. He let him that night and every other night since.

Were there other things that Steve wanted to try? With Bucky? For sure. But the silence was hanging off them like a wet sheet. There was no progressing in silence. No development.

Darting between panic and silence, between screaming and stagnation, exhaustion took a hold of them. The weapons were gone and neither S.H.I.E.L.D. nor HYDRA had made an attempt on them in a while. Nor did Sharon return. Or any other of her agents. They were all alone in their silence. In their traumas. Stuck in their heads without finding words to share.

They weren't prepared for progress anyway.

If anything Steve was falling behind. It wasn't just the panic attacks. As if those weren't bad enough. It soon was night terrors, too. And his body was short of shutting down. He could tell. Despite the serum. Despite all their equipment. Despite the weapons and despite Bucky. Despite his feelings for Bucky. He was struggling to go on.

All the while, he watched Bucky let him do what he needed. Patiently. Lovingly. Watched Bucky grow tired of the guns and the fights. Watched Bucky beginning to tend to the arm. When it misbehaved and even when it responded smoothly. He started, in an odd way, to look after it. To care for it. As if it was his own. As if he was making peace with it at last. He started to care for the metal and the scar on his shoulder. The one that took an eternity to heal. For the skin over his ribs that connected to the first few segments. And Steve keeps on watching him. Watches him get better. Watches him in his own decay. Bad habits stocking up. Lip chewing, nail biting, hair pulling. There are more nights now when it isn't Bucky's teeth grinding that wakes Steve. The raw sounds and the aching jaw. They're his own. 

And Bucky knows. Steve can tell by his looks. For the longest time he could only tell by his looks.

* * *

That night, Steve falls asleep holding Bucky again. After they both got off. He may be holding him a little tighter than usually. Maybe for the cold. Maybe just because he feels cold. Colder. Maybe just because he feels colder than usually. And he dreams of Bucky. Dreams of the soldier.

He dreams of the highway. Of when he first saw Bucky again. He dreams of the river. The lack of air in his lungs. The water that tries to flow through him. Insistently pressing against his face, his nose, his ears. Almost painfully, how it tries to rip Steve from his life. How it tries to take him. And maybe part of Steve wants to go, wants to be washed away. Wants to go to the water, be water, become water. Go where he came from. From water and ice.

In his dream, Bucky saves him all the same. Forbids him from going. From surrendering. Buck doesn't leave him though. The soldier stays. And he kisses Steve with wet hair and wet breath. He kisses Steve with wet lips and holds him in place with the metal arm.

Steve's body is weightless and he's entirely Bucky's. The soldier's. Steve's shoes are wet and his toes are wet and his dick is hard in his suit.The suit that clings to his body. Even in his dream, Buck doesn't speak. The soldier doesn't speak. Silence and kisses. And Steve's panting breaths. His needy, desperate noises. So unlike him. And yet originating in the very essence of his spine and the fibers of his heart, pumping his impatience through every last of his veins. Every last of his whines. Steve knows what the soldier wants and he wants it too. The soldier doesn't want to kill him. Or maybe he wants to kill him. Only after. But Steve doesn't care about it either way. He's soaking wet from the river, he's soaking wet from the tip of his cock, he's soaking wet from the rim of his hole. That's how much he wants it. And in his dream, it's the only thing that makes sense. That makes sense to Steve. His body finally responding to what he wants. His body giving way to the soldier. Complying to his fantasies. Steve's fantasies. The soldier's fantasies. Bucky's? If only Bucky's.

So Steve starts asking for it. Starts begging the soldier for it. Asking into the void of the asset's eyes, into their silence too. Do it, he dares him. Do it and take me. And leave nothing behind.

He's asking to be Bucky's for all the wrong reasons. Not to be saved but to be perished. To be done. Done and gone. 

The soldier's kisses aren't empty. They are heated and wet, too. And demanding. They are precise. Painfully precise. They are war and shots fired. Like his hand on Steve's stomach. Painfully insistent too. Lower. Always lower. Then his fingers go for Steve's crotch and the hand goes for his throat. Man down. 

The soldier holds him in place with a firm grip. Metal hand just under Steve's chin. Just how Bucky holds him before sleep. His hand not yielding despite Steve's impatient squirming. With the other placed over the outline of his cock, the soldier almost mocks Steve's urgency. He almost mocks what Steve had asked for. Making him harder, wetter. He asks for more than Steve's body can give. He asks for everything. Without even asking. All the while Steve begs to be allowed to give. Give it all. 

And the more Steve pleads, the more the soldier tightens his grip around Steve's neck. The more Steve pleads, the more air leaves his lungs. Denied to be replaced. Denied by the metal barrier.

And yet Steve won't stop. Begs until all the air leaves him, until all his words leave him. His voice and clear vision. Begs for the asset's hand on him. Begs for the asset's hand in him. Begs for the asset to infiltrate him. Compromise him. End him. End Captain America.

Steve knows they're watching. Tony and Fury. Alexander Pierce. Natasha. And Sharon. They're watching Captain America betray his mission. They're watching Steve betray them. Steve, who wants the soldier to finish this. Who wants the soldier to fuck him. Who wants the asset to fuck him.

Do me like you did me in our fights, do me like you did me in the streets. On the highway. In the freight car. On a Helicarrier. Just do me. Do me and end me. End it all.

The soldier turns him onto his front, face down in the dirt, positions reversed from the day Bucky ran from Sharon. And Steve yields. Moves with it. Wants it. Wants it like that. They're still watching. They're always watching. And they're going to order him back. They going to take from him too --again-- until Steve's got nothing left. Nothing but them. They're going to take the soldier, so he can't take Captain America. They're going to take Bucky and order Steve to let them. They’re going to take Bucky and order Steve to fight him. Order Steve to kill him. But Steve's beyond orders. He’s going with the soldier even if going with him means going beyond life. Means dying with him. He can't let them take him. With the metal still round his throat, too tight, Steve arches his back, aches all the way down his spine, past his rim, deep into his core, too wet, too wanton, too desperate.

"Ты готов отвечать?" the asset asks, lips so close to Steve's ear he can hear his tongue touch the roof of his mouth. How deadly. How seductive. да, Steve thinks, yes. He's ready to comply. He wants to leave them, as they reach for him. And they hold onto him. As they try to tear Bucky from him. Goodbye S.H.I.E.L.D., goodbye Avengers.

He arches his back even more when the soldier's hand presses between the cheeks of his ass, presses his stomach into the dirt. And in return, Steve presses his throat deeper into the soldier's harsh grip. He wants to feel him everywhere. The asset. The assassin. Finish it, he begs quietly. Take me and finish it, soldier. Finish your mission. End it. The longing. The burning. "Please," he forces out with last of his strength, the last of his air. A dying furnace. His senses blur. No vision, no words, just the taste of metal and rusted water. "Please," he breathes. Mouths, because there's no breath left. "Please." Please.

Please.

As often as he'll have to ask. One time. Two times. Nine. Seventeen. He'll ask to be gone by daybreak. He'll ask to be changed by daybreak. To be turned over by daybreak. The agent becomes the liability. The captain becomes the servant. Just his aching cock and his wet hole. Begging for the soldier to fuck him. Take it, Buck. Take it all and bring me home to you.

Before Bucky does, before the soldier does, it all goes black in a second and Steve falls. Blood rushing up into his head, air rushing down into his chest, and when he hits the ground, his stomach cramps. And he jolts awake with Bucky halfway shoved under his body. Halfway shoved under the hard lines of Steve hips, the hard line of his cock. Bucky's shaking, eyes wide and terrified. His right hand pressed over his ear. Against his temple. His entire body trembles, vibrates, while at the same time being hauntingly stiff. Immovable. Locked joints and tense muscles. Steve's own skin shivers. Suddenly unspeakably cold. He's sweating, and his underwear is soaked in his own urine. Bucky's underwear is soaked in Steve's urine. His stomach is soaked in Steve's urine. And the sheets underneath him.

The metal arm is spread far from Buck's body and when Steve lets his gaze travel it along, he realizes it was reaching for the empty nightstand. For the ghost of the knife. The soldier was reaching for the knife. Bucky was reaching for the knife. In self-defense of Steve's body.

Steve's hands hadn't been nowhere near Bucky's body though. Not even close. Not threatening him. Not touching him. They've been very much in Steve's own personal space. On his own body. With one still attached to his neck, fingers right under the back of his head but with his thumb pressing into the soft flesh right beside his windpipe. It hurts. He swallows and it hurts. And he slowly detaches his own hand from his own throat and it hurts. The other hand most likely buried in his hair, because when Steve had jerked away he balanced his body in reflex, he must have pulled some out while he was at it. They're still sticking to the sweaty skin between his fingers. Confused and disturbed, Steve grimaces when they catch his eye. He stares at them for a good second, not knowing what to do. With his hands. With his mouth. All dry and the back of his tongue feeling painfully swollen. Then he tries to wipe them off on the bed, hasty, trembling. Panicking when they won't get off.

Bucky stares at him. Gaze empty, words and perceptions lost on him. Disturbed all the same. Roughed up and shaken. Worse than any fight could have done him. Mirroring Steve's helplessness. Embodying Steve's helplessness. His utter confusion and incapability to comprehend what just happened.

Steve's throat still burns and he can only now gather enough composure to move both hands away from his body for now. To help himself move away from Bucky for now. Steve's cock still ready and trapped between their bodies when he pushes off him. The fact that he'd gotten hard in the first place, somewhere between wetting himself, wetting both of them, and waking up, gives him a rough idea how many minutes must have passed. How long Bucky must have tried to get away from him.

"Why didn't you just hit me?" Steve asks then, annoyed because it would have been what he'd deserved.

Apparently Bucky does not agree. He still only stares at him.

"Why didn't you just wake me?" Steve asks, somewhat angry even. Now both of them have become a liability. "Why didn't you just shove me off?"

Way to blame the victim, Cap. Steve hates himself for it. And Bucky stares.

He hates Bucky for not hating him back. Hates Bucky for staring. For long seconds that have him trapped in his own head. That forbid him to see past his own panic. Past his own shame. That keep him from Bucky. Who still stares. He puts his hands in his hair again, sore spots all over his scalp. He runs his hands over his face, tries to hide. To get his mind straight. Regain some focus. Focus, Steve. Focus. 

"Buck," Steve tries then. Gently this time as his own fingers tremble still.

Sorry this time. 

"Hey Buck," he says again. But Bucky doesn't stir. Still stares. Still shivers. Time's lost between them, nothing happens and everything happens. Somehow they manage to exist within the same space and entirely separate from the other. Steve and his shit. And then Bucky and his trauma. Any connection between them severed. 

Carefully, Steve moves further away from him, his hands shaking, his knees shaking as he stands. In fear that he broke the soldier. That he broke the functioning part of Bucky. That he had become what he'd threatened to be. The same as his handlers. His handler. The same as HYDRA. Maybe he had become like all of them.

"Talk to me, Buck," Steve tries again. He reaches out for Bucky's hair, wants to tuck back those loose strands, wet from the sweat and the fear. But Steve feels tainted. Doesn't trust that he can be gentle. Doesn't trust that his hands are capable of tender touches. His hands are tainted. As if they carry the trauma. In every knuckle. In every fingertip. As if they'd spread it. Or already have.

So he spares Bucky further contamination. And then he just stands there, in his piss-soaked underwear. In his panic. In his pain. Barefoot and helpless. Paralyzed. Unable to feel any part of his body. Numb deep into his toes. Numb even to the back of his tongue.

They're just two shaking figures now. Just two shaking ghosts.

Time passes, but Steve doesn’t know how many minutes. Can’t tell when his feet grew this cold. Or whether he woke up with them being numb. Can’t tell when the sweat cooled. When the shivers calmed. When even his skin gave up on preserving any heat for him. Can’t tell when his cock softened.

“Your Russian is shit,” Bucky says from the bed. He hasn’t moved. But he doesn’t stare anymore. He watches Steve now. His eyes, softer and tired. So familiar that it pains Steve to hold his gaze. When Bucky tries a smile, Steve's throat closes up again. Nothing but pain when he tries to swallow. He feels the tears as Bucky offers him that faint smile. The shadow of a smile. For comfort. Maybe for Steve. Maybe for both of them. But it barely even reaches the corner of his mouth. “It’s shit but don’t you dare use it ever again.”

Caught up in all this wrenching hurt, Steve can’t quite catch up with Bucky's words. Can’t recall what happened. Can’t make the pieces fit.

“What did I say?” he asks, his voice barely there. 

“Грузовой вагон,” Bucky starts. He doesn’t have to go on. Steve already knows. Heart stopping before starting to race in utter despair. “Желание,” Buck goes on nonetheless. “Печь.”

Freight car, longing, furnace.

Steve remembers. The dream. The triggers. Longing, rusted, seventeen. Daybreak. 

“Not the right order though,” Bucky says. “Thankfully.” 

Steve shrinks, feeling as if the serum was sucked back out of his body. He feels his legs give in. Doesn't find them. He goes down, holding onto his own, arms wrapped around himself. He doesn't even deserve them. 

“I’m so sorry, Buck,” Steve tries but his voice is still a no-show. He croaks out the words. Chokes on them. Chokes on empty air. On his pain and his faults.  

Bucky watches him. Quietly. Exhausted. Barely there either.

Steve wants to crawl back between his legs. He wants to clean off his own mess. Get Bucky off. Make Bucky forgive him. But he doesn't dare to move from his spot on the floor. 

"I was going to stab you in your sleep,” Bucky says absently. Defeated. “You almost made me stab you in your sleep, you asshole. You were begging me to kill you. You were begging the soldier to kill you.”

Steve holds his sobs because he knows his throat wouldn't forgive them. There's nothing he can say to make things better. A lonely tear runs down his cheek. Falls to the ground just beside his knee. Shame takes hold of him. Fills him and contains him. Washes away all other emotions.

Was this the wake of Steve's own warehouse moment?

Not really. This was worse. This was the contrary of their fight in the warehouse. The warehouse was Bucky screaming into the void. Screaming in his anger. And pain. And frustration. This was the revenge of their silence. This was the cruel awakening. This wasn't just payback for their denial. This was on them. This was on Steve.

"Don't just sit there," Buck offers, but where else would Steve go. Climb back into bed with Bucky? With Bucky, who doesn’t seem to have enough energy to move at all either? Who he let down? Whose trust he broke? 

There was no not talking about this. Just like there was no not talking about the night Steve almost lost Bucky. To the soldier. To the asset. No not talking about the night Steve almost gave Bucky to the soldier. To the asset. No no talking about triggers. And power. And abuse. No not talking about torture. And what they did to them. Not like they didn’t talk about anything before.

It wasn't Bucky's fault. It wasn't Steve's fault either. It was what they did to them. But Steve couldn't rationalize it. Yet, even in his shame, in his terror, he wanted to hand it back to them. Throw it back where it belonged. With HYDRA. With Red Skull. With Fury and Pierce. With S.H.I.E.L.D.. He wanted them to take responsibility. For Bucky. For both of them.

“What did they do to you, Buck?” Steve asks then. One more time. Just one more time. Speaking hurts, but this time staying silent would hurt even more.

Bucky waits. Long seconds. Steve can't stand the silence anymore. “They used to beg me too,” Bucky tells him then. His voice is thin, but Steve's heart burns with pride. Proud of Bucky for breaking the silence. For giving him an answer at last. “The missions,” Bucky clarifies. “My missions. They would beg me to let them live. Or they would beg me to kill them. They’d beg me to be fast. I was always fast. But sometimes HYDRA told me to go slow. So I did. They would beg. All of them did. And they would cry. They would pray. They would piss themselves too, Steve. Sooner or later they all did.”

Steve can’t help but look down to his crotch. Notices the smell for the first time. Notices how neither of them have made an attempt to rid themselves of it. If Steve wasn't already filled with more shame a human body can contain, he would burst from any additional word. But he needs to keep it together for Bucky. Talking is good, he reminds himself. Go on, Bucky. Go on and never stop talking. 

“The handlers,” Bucky starts again. As if he's heard Steve's silent plea. “Sometimes they cared what happened to the bodies. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they had to disappear. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes I could take from them whatever I wanted. Sometimes only what they told me too.”

“What do you mean,” Steve asks although he can feel the answer in the deafening weight of his heart. In the hairs standing in the back of his neck. "Take what you wanted?"

“You don’t want to know,” Bucky says again, but he knows that Steve already knows. There's no use in spelling it out. The soldier only knows needs. 

“It wasn’t you,” Steve tells him again. “That wasn’t you, Bucky.”

“Wasn’t it?” he asks this time.

“No,” Steve says again, because he needs to hear it. Both of them need to hear it.

“Why do you beg for him then?” Bucky asks them. “What’s it about the soldier that made you learn all the trigger words?”

“I need to recognize them,” Steve says immediately. Defensively. “To protect you. To stop anyone. From saying them again.”

“And you?” Buck asks. "Who's going to stop you?"

You, Steve thinks. The soldier. He must be tired of it too. Of war and missions. “I don’t care,” is what Steve admits instead. He didn’t think he had to tell Buck again. Not after what happened. Not after Tony. "I'm not scared of you. Him. Whatever."

“You say it wasn’t me,” Bucky says. Quotes Steve's own words right back at him. Quietly. Almost scared. “You say it wasn’t me on missions. But if you don’t care for a difference between him and me, why should I? Why should anyone?”

“You weren’t him,” Steve starts. He feels bare. Stripped of more than his clothes and his pride. “But he was you when that mask came off on that godforsaken highway. He was all you the moment he turned around. He was everything I had left of you. And I wasn’t going to let him be hurt.”

“And now you call for him?” Bucky asks. "In your dreams?"

“I’m his mission,” Steve says, swallowing. His throat still burns. Still tightens when he talks. Inhales. Holds his breath. “You left when you got your memories back. You left for Bucharest. You just got had to get away, didn't you. No note, no nothing. No call, no card. Did you ever plan to come back for me? Did you ever think that I needed you to come back for me?”

Bucky’s quiet. Not silent. His silence speaks. His silence admits guilt. But they can’t afford silence anymore. “I’m sorry, Steve,” Bucky tells him. Silence again. Then an 'I’m sorry’ again. And suddenly Steve wants to go back to not talking. Wants to go back to just running. To running with Bucky if it can’t be being with Bucky. He wants the knife back. On the bedside table. He wishes it would have been there tonight. For the soldier to find. But they talk now. 

“So you weren’t going to come back?” Steve asks again. This, this is a different kind of panic. Not the heated, cold-sweated, heart-racing, throat-closing panic. This is the end. This panic knows no tomorrow. This panic knows of its own end. Of the end of all things. This panic is hollow grief. And a hero’s grave.

“I don’t know.” Bucky moves. Sits up. Then sits down. Reaches for Steve. Next to him on the floor. Fingertips grazing over the naked skin just above Steve’s knee. “I was trying to get them all back before,” Buck tries. Tries to explain. ”The memories. I was going to get them all back before.”

“It was my fault you lost them,” Steve says. More to himself. “It was my fault you fell off that train. It was my fault what they did to you. I wouldn't have come back for me either. And yet I’d rather the soldier kill me than know you’ll walk away from me again.”

"It's not your fault," Bucky tells him. 

"Maybe not," Steve just says. If he could, he'd shrug Bucky's touch off. But he could never. "But if it was, I'd understand."

“We shouldn't have done what we did,” Bucky says then. Steve knows what he means. He hates Bucky for it.

“Why?” he asks. “Because James Bucky Barnes is above feelings? Or because I'm not allowed to feel what I feel?”

“Because what you feel is fucked up, Steve,” Bucky tells him.

“Didn’t you know?” Steve asks. “Before the war? Before the serum? Nothing has changed, Buck.”

“It was fucked up then,” Bucky says.

“My entire life is fucked up,” Steve spits. Every word as painful as the memories. He doesn’t want to compare. But he doesn’t want to hide from it either. From their past. From the war. From losing Peggy. Losing Bucky. Losing his home. “I don’t have a life anymore. I live for the cause. The good cause.”

“You've always lived for the good cause,” Buck reminds him. Cruel in his honesty. Looks at him as if he doesn't recognize Steve anymore. It haunts Steve. Just another reminder of what he'd once lost. Could lose again. “You always lived for a better world. Nothing’s changed. Like you said.”

“Everything’s changed.”

“Go shower,” Bucky tells him. Pushing Steve closer to another panic attack.

“How do I know you'll still be here when I come back?” he asks. His lips shake and he’s unsure whether or not he’ll believe whatever Bucky would say anyway.

“Yes,” is Buck's answer but Steve can barely hear him, so he shakes his head out of reflex. “Yes,” Bucky says again, even gently taps the back of his metal fingers against Steve’s side to get his attention.

But it's too late now for Steve to hear him. Steve can’t move. If he’ll go he’ll lose Bucky again. They’re coming for Bucky and now Bucky is going to leave. Maybe they’ve already gotten to Bucky. And that’s why he wants to get away from Steve. They brainwashed him again. Steve has nowhere to go.

They just sit like that for a long while. Steve in his fucked up panic. And Bucky right next to him. Resigned to whatever goes on inside his head. Guilt or memories. Guilt and memories. 

Eventually Bucky tells him to get up. Pulls Steve right up with him. They shower together for the first time since the night Steve tried to stop Bucky from forcing his fingers between the arm and his own body. Where they hadn't showered together but rather stood under the same shower head. Looking at the other in anger and shock. Their looks then not too different from their looks now. But everything else is different now. Face to face, just an inch from the other, it pulls Steve back into is own. His eyes take it all in. Bucky's hair, the strands that frizzle out just over his shoulders. The collar bones just under his throat. His chin that he tilts up ever so slightly. For a second there, Steve had forgotten about the serum all together. His body, deep down somewhere, still so used to looking up at Bucky. 

"What are you smiling at?" Buck asks. Steve hadn't even noticed. Hadn't noticed his thoughts showing on his face. No tears this time.

He looks at Bucky, watches him this time around. Waits for him to return his gaze. And then Steve leans in, slow at first. Just a hint of a move. Hesitating. And then Bucky scoffs. Like he always does. Scoffs under a smirk. And Steve kisses him. As if he hadn't kissed him in years. Centuries. Because that's how it feels like. With one hand on the back of Buck's neck and the other on his shoulder, he pulls him closer. 

It's Steve apologizing once more. It's Steve asking for forgiveness. And if kissing him back is Bucky's way of accepting, of forgiving, then he does wholeheartedly. His entire body finding peace in Steve's space. Confidently. Cocky. Bucky.

Soaking up every one of Steve's touches. Teasing him in return. A head tilt, an almost broken kiss, only for his mouth to be back on Steve a split second later. A brush of his fingers over Steve's thighs. Over the small of his back. The tip of his tongue between Steve lips. Waiting to be met halfway. 

Steve's body is slow to respond, tired and worn out. He just lets himself be swept away with the tides of what Bucky gives and takes. Sometimes eager and firm, sometimes tender, barely asking for anything but the anticipation of physical contact. Steve lets Bucky wash the shame off him. Off both of them. The shame and the guilt. And when Bucky asks this time, asks if this is as far as he's ever gone, Steve nods. And even tells him 'yes' through the bruises on his throat. The ones of his own hand. The ones that Bucky kisses first. And then even grazes his teeth over the sore skin. The ones he traces with a metal finger. 

Steve blushes. He didn't even know he still could. And Buck smiles at him. Runs his fingers through Steve's hair. At the side of his head. Just above his ear. Tugs him forward and pulls him in until Steve's forehead rests against his own. Steve lets his eyes fall shut, lets all his other senses see for him. Lets Bucky see for him. For he is all Steve feels. 

"It's you and me, buddy," Buck says softly. "You and me til the end of the line."

Steve nods. A hint of a nod. He know. He remembers. And for a moment, he feels the residue of something long lost within reach. Hope maybe. Healing. Being with Bucky. Wherever they are. 

What does Steve want? 

Sleep.

He wants to hold Bucky and sleep. 

And despite everything,

Bucky lets him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slowly onto happier times now, I promise.


	6. Chapter 6

Things didn't get better after that.

It wasn't as if Steve was expecting them too. By now he was always expecting the worst. Second nature to his tormented realism. Things -- in life, in general -- never truly solved themselves. He knew it. Bucky knew it. There was no shortcut in life to the next chapter. No shortcut to a better version. No Updates.

That had been the reason he so desperately had wanted to become a soldier in the first place. The reason he agreed to become Captain America in the first place.

He wanted to be the bug in the system. The glitch in the matrix. He wanted to be the only exception. He wanted to be hope. He wanted, more than anyone, be proven wrong. He wanted to be the living example of all that was just. And of all that was going to be okay. In the end. At the end of the line. 

But he wasn't. 

They weren't. 

There are a lot of things that Steve is still getting used to. Sleeping on the floor when he doesn't trust his dreams to be gentle. He doesn't have to. Bucky doesn't want him to. He sleeps with ear buds now. But Steve wants to. When he feels threatened. When he feels like trapped. When he feels like they found them. After catching glimpses of Tony on the news. In the papers at gas stations. Of Bruce. Of Sam.

He's still getting used to the sound of Bucky's laughter in the car. Watching him drive from the passenger side. His face, his focus. His concentration. So different from the soldiers determination. The metal hand on the wheel. Switching the lights on after sundown. The rolled up sleeves. And his hair tied together and out of his neck. His bottom lip between his teeth when he nods along to a song. Songs on the radio. Songs on Steve's mind. There's a lot to get used to.

The bruise on his throat, from his own thumb, that just won't fade. Reminding him that the serum can't protect them from self harm. Not anymore.

Before bed, Bucky tips Steve's chin up to give it another look. And Steve swallows under his gaze. Feels the soreness from that night like a phantom pain. Or was it still there this morning? He wasn't allowed to use his mouth on Bucky since. Although he wanted to. He never feels pain when he is with Bucky. He only ever feels him. His best friend. His life line. His heartbeat. He only ever feels Bucky in the metal too. 

There's more touching now since there's more talking. During the day. There's Bucky's hand on his shoulder before they head out. Bucky's face in the crook of Steve's neck. His hand over Steve's ribs. After a hug. Just lingering. Mending Steve's edges. Not just on his sides and on top of the sweater. But later. Tender fingers over bare skin. Tender metal over bare skin. All over Steve's arms and his back. All over his chest when it felt too tight to breathe. 

And it wasn't just Bucky. It was Steve running his hands over the underside of Bucky's arms. Steve who softly traced the scars and the patterns. Steve who wanted to touch every part of Bucky. Every hair on his skin and every broken part that forgot it was human. 

Watching Bucky must be Steve's favorite thing by now. Watching him become one. Buck and the soldier. Day after day it gets harder to tell them apart. To trace back a movement or a thought. 

Their touches become one too. More messy but no less insistant. Arrogant at times and confident. Slower though, as if time stood still. And metal became silk. 

Steve misses the sex. Misses getting off. Even in his shameful way. That desperate way. He misses Bucky on his tongue and swallowing him down. The taste and the heat. Drinking him up right before sleep. He misses it being Bucky's and his thing. He misses being Bucky's thing. Being Bucky's. Every night. 

More often than not Steve gets frustrated now. Not because of the lack of sex, but because of the limitations of his own desires. Buck is there, right under his fingertips most of the time. And Steve loves staring at him still. The elegance of Sergeant Barnes. Right before he was heading to war. The way he carried himself in the howling commando. The way the soldier used to strides over bridges and highways. Steve doesn't want to do anything other than go down on his knees. For Bucky. Who he sometimes forgot was a soldier even before he became _The Soldier_. Steve doesn't know what to do with his body otherwise. He doesn't know how to hold himself, doesn't know how to hand himself over, allow himself to be touched. There's so much more underneath his skin, so much more that he want's to feel, but he can't find a way to open himself up. He wants the one thing, Bucky doesn't want anymore.

In the car, from where he's driving once more, Bucky reaches over. Gently strokes the spot in the crook of Steve's elbow. And then places his whole hand around it. Squeezes softly. Steve gives him a smile but he doesn't feel it further than his own cheek. 

"Hey Steve, you remember the first costume they gave you?" Bucky asks.

"I remember you liking it," Steve says, feeling the smile return to him. 

"It was hideous," Buck says. "Is that why you-," he glances over to Steve, hesitates. "Is that why you kept it though? Even after, you know, everything?" 

"What? You're trying to trick me now into saying another fucked up thing?" Steve tries to keep it light, but part of him is still hurting. "They didn't exactly give me a choice," he says then. Recalling the whole exchange with Coulson. "I just went with it."

Bucky nods. Focusing on the street.

"Disappointed?" Steve asks. 

"You shouldn't have put the shield down," Buck tells him. 

"We've been over this," Steve argues. He doesn't care to hear more. "It wasn't mine to keep. You really want me to go back? To them? And just keep going? For the rest of my life? The next hundred years? Or the next two hundred years? Until I die in battle?"

"That's not what I said," Bucky tells him, shaking his head. He's had it with fighting Steve too. Steve knows. They've been fighting for too long. They never stopped. Not since his mom died. Not since the fire in that stupid warehouse. Since Red Skull and Germany. Since Pierce. Since Tony. 

"Maybe I shouldn't have," Steve adds, bargaining for a little bit of peace. A truce. "But it's done now." And then, an afterthought for no one in particular. "I'm sure they'll find someone else to do the job."

Bucky kisses him later, after they've parked the car behind an abandoned gas station. Two miles from the place they're going to spend the night. Just when Steve's about to start walking, eager to get off the streets, Buck pulls him back by the elbow again. Pulls Steve closer by the collar of his shirt. Gives him a look that isn't too far from angry. Isn't too far from another fight. But instead of shouting at him, of throwing another punch, Bucky kisses him. Kisses him like they should have a century ago. Right before they shipped him off. Right before heading out for another battle. Holds him. Catches him even when Steve stumbles into him. With his face so close, he can see his own frustration mirrored in Bucky's expression. The breathless anger. The wasted time and their wrung out bodies. 

Steve grabs him by the jacket. Lets himself be shoved against the wall. Lets himself be moved to a hidden spot between car and building. The sun's been gone for a while, so by the minute it gets harder even for him to make out the small changes on Bucky's face. Gets harder to make out the way of his movements. And before long, Steve surrenders himself to the darkness. Surrenders himself to his other senses. Bucky puts more of his body against Steve, corners him, with his legs spread in a wide stance. He puts his lips right under Steve's chin, his tongue against the lasting bruise.  

When he moves to the side of Steve's neck, the bridge of Buck's nose scratches along Steve's beard, his breath ghosting over Steve's skin. Over the bare and lonely skin. Over the wet spots he leaves behind.

Steve's jaw aches when Bucky's lips reach it. Aches with longing. Aches with memories. Aches with the tenderness that becomes so painful as it slows the world. Slows the thoughts. As it forces Steve to hold still on his own. Hold still and let go. To his surprise, there's tenderness even in the scrape of Bucky's teeth. In the tight grip on his collars and Bucky's balled fist so close to his chest. There's tenderness in the muscles of his back that work him closer into Steve's space. Tenderness in the outline of his cock against the top of Steve's thigh. 

Is Steve hard, too? Maybe. Probably. Not like before. Not like when he was allowed to crawl towards Buck's body. And just find purpose there. Purpose that left his head entirely empty. When for once the relentless stream of thoughts and worries were trickling away. 

He lets Bucky kiss him again, open mouthed and rough. Lets him tug on the waistband of Steve's jeans aggressively. Impatiently. And for once the metal feels cold upon contact with Steve's skin. Makes his stomach tighten as Bucky works the zipper down. Almost makes him shudder. In surprise more than anticipation. He needed Bucky's hand somewhere else. The memories of it against his throat were so vivid, so sensual and intense, Steve choked on his own breath. Had to break the kiss to get a grip. To find his way back to where they were. Fresh air in the darkness around them. Nothing threatening to block his airway. Nothing to take over. 

Yes, he is hard. He's as hard as he was in his dream. But he isn't as wet. He isn't as ready. And the soldier isn't looming over him. Isn't trying to break him. To end him. This time it's more Bucky than the asset. It's Bucky who puts his hands on either side of Steve's hip for a moment, steadies himself as he leans back just a little. Bucky's gaze that checks him over when he held back that cough just a second ago. Bucky's choice not to ask about it. Although, Steve is sure the he knows anyway. He can feel the little twitch in the metal arm above his hip bone. Resonating through Steve's body. Bringing chaos to just the right area. Bucky's choice not to act on it. 

Or maybe Steve had imagined the whole thing. Maybe he wants Bucky to miss their old ways as much as he does. Their old ways that draw a line in the sands of their proximity. A line Buck is eager to cross now. But Steve knows the moment they move past it, the moment they actually do what they were about to do, he'd had no way of asking of them to go back. To return to their old ways. Why would they? Why would they, if Steve was going to love this. 

And he knows he was going to.

With every breath the line fades. With every stroke of Bucky's thumb so close to Steve's cock. With every thought passing through Steve's head. Did they talk about this? Or did Steve imagine how that conversation went.

'How far do you want to go?' 

But their relationship couldn't be measured in distance anymore. Couldn't be measured in milestones anymore. They've crossed and and double crossed every line Steve thought there was. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Friends and lovers. Innocence and- 

Innocence and what? The tainted shameful rugged realms of what lies beyond vanilla skies? Yes, they've been there. Steve had been there. In his dreams too. In his imaginations. Did Bucky have fantasies now? Now that he left the soldier behind? Wasn't that how the conversation went? 

'I want to be with you.'

'You're always with me.'

'I want to be with you all the way.'

'You want to spell that out?'

'I want the one thing you haven't given to anyone else yet. I want to know what we could have had. Before everything. In Brooklyn.'

Yeah, maybe that's how it went. Maybe Steve was already drifting off. Maybe he'd dreamed parts of it. Maybe not. But Steve's not worried about it anyway. They've already been naked with each other in more ways imaginable. And they've already seen the best parts of the other. The worst. 

"Don't say no," Bucky says, back in Steve's space. Mumbles the words into the skin just above Steve's collarbone.

He wasn't. He wasn't going to say no. No to what even? 

Does Bucky know what they were doing? If Steve had been able to find words just now, he may have said the same thing. Don't say no, not as to say 'Don't deny me'. But as to say 'Don't deny yourself'. If for no better reason, don't say no to what you want.  

Steve knows he can't switch one for the other, knows he'll never recover what he found lost with his mouth in between Bucky's thighs, but he has got to move on. They have got to move on. The way they always have to. And because he, too, is too tired to keep on messing around. 

Because he too wants to see what they could have had. Before anything. In Brooklyn. 

When his jeans drop, the air around his knees isn't as cold as the first metal touch had been. He reaches for Bucky's own zipper and the button at the top. He fumbles. Fails for a second. Not out of nervousness. But because his hands were numb. It was happening after all. And it wasn't going to happen without his participation. And somehow this wasn't clear to his body. Somehow his body thought, it could just step aside. And only return after they've been done. After they've seen what it was. That they left untouched in the past. In a different New York. 

And suddenly Steve longs for home like he's never done before. Longs for the city. To be returned and to never leave again. Looking at Bucky now, mends the pain. Bucky is home. Bucky is all that home is now. And all that was Brooklyn before the war. Before the serum. Before they've lost each other. Were taken, no, ripped from the other. 

He succeeds eventually. Getting Buck's cock free from pants and underwear. A glance, and then Steve can't help himself. Touches him with the same numb hands. The manifestation of his memories. And while his stomach tightens again, his jaw softens. At the sight of what constituted his entire sexuality up until this moment. As if he could read Steve's thoughts, Bucky nudges Steve's chin up with the bridge of his nose. No scraped up knees today. No aftertaste of Bucky in the morning.

Steve looks away, looks to the side, before he lets himself be turned around. Or maybe it was him turning in Buck's hands. The metal hand on his hips, the other on his shoulder. And then Steve braces himself against the wall. Forearms all lined up with the concrete, a strand of hair falling in sight. He's got a second to wonder when it had become so long, before Bucky's got both his hands low on Steve's back. Soothing. Reassuring.

He lets them move down slowly, both his thumb slipping between Steve's cheeks, causing him to let out a shaky breath. Buck spreads them lightly before he runs the tender thumb of his right hand over Steve's rim. For a split second Steve feels the memories of his dream wash over him, wondering why it didn't just slip in. Doubting that he isn't all open and wet and yearning already. 

Then Steve remembers that his body doesn't work like that. The he can't just will himself to be whatever Bucky needs. All of his muscles tighten when they should instead relax, tighten right under Buck's skin. 

Bucky rests his forehead in the crook of Steve's neck. Taking a few calming breaths himself. Then he adds some pressure to his touch, gently working on the tight ring until it starts to soften. 

"You don't have to-," Bucky starts, talking down the length of Steve's back, but breaks off. 

"Do this?" Steve asks. He holds his eyes shut tight. Not really wanting to face the wall as he talks to Buck.

"Be scared." This time when he talks, Bucky tilts his head up. Steve can't see but he knows once Buck's voice is closer to his ear. Knows for sure once Buck kisses the back of his neck. 

'I'm not', is what Steve tries to say, but his body answers for him by letting the tip of Bucky's thumb breach. Steve steadies himself, toes to breath, but Bucky stills, just letting them feel for a long second before he pulls back. 

To have somewhere to rest his own forehead, Steve moves his hands closer together, stares at his roughed up nails for a second, before he closes his eyes again to hand himself over. 

There's nothing else left to do, but let Bucky work him open. Which he does, slowly, with careful fingers that he wets from his own lips. And maybe Steve should help in one way or another. But with the way Bucky makes use of his fingers, makes use of nothing but saliva and his own precome to ease the way, there really is no need to add Steve's non existent knowledge of these happenings. Nor is there, much like Bucky promised, any reason to be scared. It makes Steve thinks this isn't by far the first time Bucky has done this. And he can't help but imagine him in Brooklyn's alleys. With women that weren't Steve. With men that weren't Steve. With someone who wasn't Steve. 

Bucky alternates between using his thumb or one or two of his fingers. The one of his right hand. He uses the metal fingers only to give himself a little more room, holding Steve open in a way that makes Steve hides his face.

It's all a little too much. The drag of Bucky's skin against his rim, his fingers taking over Steve's body from the inside. Slowly adding to the stretch. The discomfort of accommodating him. Letting him past any of those last defenses. Defenses Steve didn't even know he had. The way his own cock leaks drops of clear fluid in anticipation. And all he wants is for Bucky to reach around him, wipe it off with a metal finger. 

The minutes pass mostly in silence, with Steve having his lip between his teeth, traces of sweat in the palm of his hand and where his forehead touches its back. All that Steve can say for sure about Bucky is that his breath feels damp and that his fingers gradually quicken with growing impatience. 

He wants it. Even more than Steve wants it. And if that wasn't all the more proof of his progress then just because Steve was in fucking denial over it. Or wished it was differently even? No, he didn't. He wouldn't dare. And yet- 

Let _him_ fuck me, Steve thinks. Let the asset finish its mission.

He can hear Bucky give his own cock a few strokes, spreading around whatever he gathered at the tip. Steve craves to be touched as well, jerks his hips once, twice, in thin air. Bucky holds him steady with the metal hand on his hips and Steve whines, both at the loss of its touch on his ass and the lack of its touch on his cock. 

"Buck," he tries, forces the word out between his teeth. "Come on, I've got-"

He doesn't have to spell it out. Bucky slings his arms around him just a beat later, the metal arm curling around Steve's body like a mechanical snake. Steve holds his breath when he watches Bucky reach for his cock. When he watches the metal fingers close around its length. The touch has Steve shudder in relief. The sight has him torn between shutting his eyes tight and staring. Has him never wanting to see another thing. Bite his lips with more intent. The intent to hide the moan that aches to pass his throat.

A few gentle tugs, and then Bucky tightens his hand just enough, works it up and then slowly drags his thumb over the head of Steve's cock. Not a second later, he presses it lightly against Steve's hole. Using Steve's precome to ease the way. When the metal finger slides in finally, Steve cries out, mouth pressed painfully against the back of his hand. 

Bucky butts his head against Steve's shoulder blade. Not just once. But a couple of times, trying to keep his head in the game. 

He fucks Steve with his metal thumb, not even half a minute before he retracts it for both their sake. Steve's close to losing it. Edging on his own climax but more than that he's losing it over not being able to see. Not being able to beg for more. Not being able to hold onto anything but himself when all he wants to do is to cling to the metal bicep, cling to a metal shoulder. Quietly ask for Bucky's right hand on his throat. And if not on his throat then his hair. Or a finger for his mouth. Or even just ask to hold Bucky's right hand in his own. Hold it. Hold it and kiss it for as long as he can feel part of Bucky's left one inside him. Part of the soldier. 

As soon as Bucky's finger retreats, Buck lines up his cock, ready to have of Steve what he never gave anyone else. 

There's a moment of disturbing nothingness, an empty pause in which neither of them move, neither of them speak. And the only thing on Steve's mind is the head of Buck's cock against his hole. Just resting there as impatience grows in both of them. As anticipation grows in both of them. Or so Steve figures.

His breaths become quicker, thicker, harsher, as he forces all of his concentration to remain on his muscles. Relax, he reminds himself. Willing his rim not to clench around the mere ghost of Buck's cock, still not pushing in.

He's got to stay open and ready, he's got to be Bucky's tonight. Here. Now. On this shabby street behind a worn out abandoned building where they probably used to keep the dumpsters. 

The soldier wouldn't have made amends now. Compromises. But Bucky's more than the soldier and Bucky knows Steve. Although he keeps his metal hand on the side of Steve's ass, forcing his cheeks apart just for that little bit of more space, of more view, he slings the other around Steve's neck. Not too tight. Cautious of he old bruise. But he lets Steve hook his chin over his forearm, giving him at least something from their other times. Giving Steve the illusion of his surrender. Of Bucky's superiority. Of Bucky's precedence.

Bucky does this thing with his head again, tapping a rhythm against Steve's shoulder blade with his forehead. A couple of seconds pass. Steve matches his breathing. And then Bucky tightens his grip on Steve's ass, tightens his hold of him. Shoulders, collarbones and throat. Holds him against his own body and then pushes his hips forwards, pushes his cock forward. 

Steve's body yields, under a single groan, from Bucky maybe, but rather Steve. Though Steve heard Bucky in his own voice, in every sound he's making. Thinking none of it matters, not with how much their bodies ache to connect. With how much Steve's body aches to take Buck in. Rim stretching around him, pliant and soft despite everything. Despite war and violence and endless fights. Despite malfunctioning minds and the constant fight or flight mode. The soldier longing for his long lost unit. The captain longing to leave no man behind.

Steve's mouth has long fallen open, his face hidden between the back his own hands and Buck's forearm under his chin. Suddenly craving to put it on Bucky's skin, Steve curls his neck to unhook his chin and instead runs his lips over the patch of skin just above Buck's wrist. Where his long-sleeve's been rolled up just a little. And Steve uses his nose to push the fabric further along the skin, kissing every bare part he can reach. With the scent of Bucky's skin in his nose and its taste on his tongue, he lets his lips graze over the fields of fine hairs, already knowing he'll never be the same again.

Only seconds have passed, Bucky's cock halfway in Steve, who tries not to clench around him yet. Lost in his own thoughts, Steve doesn't know what came first. The tremor in Buck's metal hand on his ass or Buck's tight, heaving breaths. Once he realizes that something is off, he notices it all at once. The shaking hand pulling on his body, causing an almost painful stretch. The wheezing, the choked breathing. The sudden return of Bucky's head against his back, too hard this time, too rough, as he presses it against Steve's body.

Steve tries to shake his own head off, to get his mind to focus, wants Buck to pull out or bottom out. Anything that would stop holding them prisoners in the surreal half-state of thing. Halfway in, halfway good, halfway present. 

Steve tries to turn, but Bucky's arm is stiff around Steve's neck, almost as stiff and motionless as the metal arm would go in its resting state. He tries again though, eyes searching, body moving, elbow hitting Buck's ribs, who snaps out of it. Out of something. Who pulls Steve all the way down on his cock, thrusts once, twice after before he lets go of Steve's body completely and tossed him to the side. 

It happens too fast, too unexpected for Steve to react, to catch his fall. Legs still tangled up in his jeans around his ankles, he hits the pavement with his shoulders, crying out over the sudden surge of pain, hole clenching over emptiness as his entire body tightens, stomach curling in shock.

He scrambles in panic, in fear that Bucky took off in the dark, but then he can hear him only a few feet away. Can hear him over the shrill in his ears, over the rushing blood. And the terror. And his own panting breaths.

He hears him coughing, but soon his coughing turns into gagging. And then he listens to Bucky vomit in the dark. Listens as he hurls out food and bile. 

Steve runs his hands through his hair, his own fingers shaking, runs them through it over and over again. Then over his face and his neck, over one arm, then the other before he just holds himself. Before he just stands there, only his arms around him for comfort, pants still down and butt naked in the night. Until his knees give in and he can't do anything else but sit down. Stumbles before he manages to sink lower, with his back against the wall and his bare ass in the asphalt. It's cold and he's hurting and the humiliation is not just washing over him, but piercing into every part of him so sharp that the tears don't do justice to his pain. Not the tears, not the sobs, not the empty scream. But he cries anyway. He cries for himself and he cries for Bucky. He cries for their lost selves and the lost time. He cries for how they shouldn't have to come back from this.

Bucky sits down next to him after there's nothing left to purge his body of. Nothing left but emptiness inside. The same emptiness that has taken over Steve's body. Only so many tears left to cry. Buck lets him though. Lets him give way to those last sobbing breaths. He's got the back of his head resting against the wall with tired eyes that he closes just after Steve's got a chance to glance at him. 

"Guess this was a bad idea," Steve says, voice weak and clogged from crying.

Buck huffs. Of course he does. Then he stays quiet for a while before he speaks again. "The memories," he starts. "From-"

"I know," Steve cuts him off. He wasn't going to blame Bucky.

"You okay?" Buck asks. "I'm sorry. For what just happened. I'm sorry," he adds, pained look on his face, even before Steve's got a chance to reply to his question. 

He nods, thinking of all the apologies Buck and he had spoken on behalf of their parts that were broken beyond responsibility. 

"Come on, I'll help you up," Buck says and manages to get his own body standing rather smoothly.

He holds out his hand for Steve who takes it without hesitation and lets himself be pulled up. Buck gives him one of those smiles that Steve recognizes from himself. The ones that are not just reassuring but loving and warming and encouraging. He bends down then to help Steve get his pants back up. He lets the touch of his fingers linger before he buttons him back up. Runs the back of his fingers along the waistband until his hands meet. It's not a full on hug with the way Bucky gently pats his ass before he just lets his hands rest there on its curve, but Steve hugs him back nonetheless. Brings his arms around Bucky's shoulders and holds on tight.

"Is this how it's going to be?" he asks. Asks Bucky as much as himself. As much as the entire godforsaken universe.

"Yeah," Bucky just says. He pulls back until he can face him. Reaches to hold Steve's face in both his hands. "We already went from 'dying from it' to 'living with it'. That's more than most people get."

They'll come back from this...

They'll come back from this no matter what. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh yes, I appropriated that one line from Infinity War ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	7. Chapter 7

"Aren't you tired of these dirty places yet?"

Steve turns his head. Listening for an explanation. A second question. Anything that would help him feel less guilty about where they are. When Bucky had asked that question they've just settled for the night. Both on their backs, facing a cracked open ceiling with a fifty percent chance of it coming down later that night. Ratty blanket and a stench smell all around them. Steve wants to reach for Bucky, touch something unbroken, but he's too scared since.

Should he be more or less worried that Bucky even noticed? That he complains again. Had his place in Bucharest been any better?

It hadn't looked any better.

Maybe this was still Bucky getting better.

"I'm starting to get used to them," Steve tells him. He scoots down a little to give himself the only comfort he can think of. And then doesn't move from where he's got his face so close to Bucky's ribs, to the scarred skin that holds onto the metal. If he'd close his eyes, he could imagine the touch. The tip of his nose bumping over each bone. The faint scent of metal and Bucky's sleep warm skin in every breath. "You mind it?"

"I used to be used to them, too," Buck says, catching Steve's thought. Maybe he wants to explain. But he doesn't have to explain. He doesn't have to explain himself. Not to Steve. But the way he says it still makes Steve squirm. He shouldn't have assumed it wouldn't be an issue. Why wouldn't Bucky care where they slept? How they lived? How could anyone not care? How could Steve just give up on caring?

"It's not like we had anything better in between," Steve tries to rid himself of the guilt. It's not like they had anything better in Germany. During the war. When they slept in the mud and lived on the road. Dirt not just stuck to the bottom of the shoes. Stuck to their skin and the hair. Dirt below the belt and the armpit. Itching wherever they went. "Or barely before."

"We had it better than this, Steve," Buck reminds him. In Brooklyn. Before it all went to shit. "Didn't we?" he asks still just to make sure. If only Steve could bring himself to lie to him now. "We had it better before the war," Buck goes on. Not waiting for confirmation anymore. He must have lost faith in Steve's memory. Or lost trust in Steve to tell him what's real. "You just forgot about that. You don't want to remember."

Maybe, Steve thinks. Maybe it hurts to remember.

"Maybe," he says then. In a despising way he was trying to punish himself. Forcing himself to admit that they had it better. That he was not able to give Bucky any better now. That maybe he was never going to be able to. "Even then," he adds, because he wants to punish Bucky too. For reminding him. "Those are just memories now." He takes a deep breath, trying to get more of Bucky than the stale scent hanging over them. It's useless. An he rubs his nose as he exhales. Trying to rid himself of the mistakes.

"Yeah," Buck says. Quietly. Almost hurt. Steve's an asshole. "Just memories. Worth everything to me."

"I didn't mean it like that," Steve turns to face back the ceiling. He's ruining this. Like he's ruined everything before. Sensing that he's not as welcomed in Buck's intimate space as he was before, he brings some distance between them. "I feel the dirt," he adds then. Hesitantly. Remembering the war. Remembering that he never got to see how it ended. Never got to clean himself of the battle. Instead he was washed by S.H.I.E.L.D. just like the soldier was washed by HYDRA. "It's not just where I go," he says then. "I'm taking it with me anyway. It's tainted me. It's all inside me."

He places a hand over his heart, the other over his stomach. Feeling for grains of sand and forgotten bullets. For the sickness underneath the serum.

"There's only good in you, Steve," Buck tries. Steve feels his eyes on him, but he can't bear to look back. "Only good," Bucky insists. "Couple of bad decisions maybe." There's a laugh. Gliding softly through the air a million miles away. Maybe a dream. "But that's it."

Steve closes his eyes to chase the dream. Chase the laughter. "I'm obsessed with your innocence," he admits then. Punishes himself once more by forcing the words out. "Whether you believe in it yourself or not."

"I know." Buck nudges Steve's wrists out of the way. When Steve dares a glance, Buck runs a metal finger down his chest and Steve wonders if he would still be able to tell the difference from just the touch. If he hadn't opened his eyes. Wondered, if there was a chance he'd gotten so used to the touch, if there was a chance it had gotten so familiar, that his senses wouldn't bother to tell metal from skin. Would only bother to note that it was Bucky's touch. And note that it was all that mattered anyway.

"You were the noble one," Steve says. No Punishment this time. Just the truth. Even if faith and trust was lost among it. "You still are."

For a moment, he briefly contemplates a life in which their roles were reversed. Contemplates. Allows himself to yearn for it even. A life in which Bucky was going to save the world. And Steve was the asset. A different kind of soldier. Steve was the ghost and the assassin. Steve was death and compliance. Was wiped of responsibility and fear. In which Steve was taken to serve. And reduced to his needs.

And wouldn't be judged for it.

A life in which Peggy would have died without knowing what his life had turned into. So that she too could die without regrets. This life in which Bucky would take him from HYDRA. Save him from HYDRA. Make him remember after all those centuries. Would HYDRA come for Steve?

This life in which Steve had the metal arm and still be the weapon himself. The metal arm that would touch him like no other. In both lives alike. But would Bucky love it all the same?

"You would have died for me," Steve says. "You did die for me," he corrects himself. And that's why Bucky was the one with the metal arm.

"No one died," Buck reminds him. His voice is as gentle as his touch. It pains Steve to allow it. The touch and for the words to settle. No one died.

Steve wants to cherish the touch. Wants to revel in it. It's not that it's new. They touch. It's a fact. It's not the intimacy that ignites him. Instead, he finds himself breathless at how common they share it now. Habitually. Almost banally normal. Another thing he had missed happening down the road. Another thing he had failed to register before. Bucky wasn't touching him in order to comfort Steve. He was touching him because they were close enough to touch. And that was all the reason he needed.

So Steve dares to reach out to him in return. Hesitantly at first. Insecure. Tries to reach the end of a few strands of Bucky's hair with his finger tips. Then runs them through it lightly. For long seconds. Through minutes of silence. Just because he can. Just because Buck was close enough. "What have I done?" he wonders then. All of his late realizations curling beneath his skin. Attempting to seek light and air. Holding Steve's voice hostage. And he's tempted to take responsibility now. Tempted to look beyond what's screaming in his head. Tempted to give up faith and trust in his own truth. If they aren't coming, if no one's coming to take them, take Bucky, then what has he done making them run. "You know why were different, don't you?" Steve asks. But it's not a question. It's an attempt to find an excuse. "Different from the others?"

"You mean aside from the obvious?" Bucky asks. For some reason, he smiles though and waits for Steve to continue. He doesn't ask what Steve has done. He doesn't ask, yes Steve, why did you make me run? They've been over this, hadn't they. Bucky knows. He knows Steve has taken him to keep him. Because he wants Bucky more than he wants Bucky to be exonerated. 

"Everyone else is home bound," Steve says. What a pitiful excuse for an excuse. What an embarrassing attempt to justify his actions. If they aren't coming, then it must be us who have no where to go. "All of them have a place to return to." He shakes his head absently. As if he can't believe his own lie. As if that is a shameful thing to admit. "Not us though," he tells Buck. Tells himself more. Needs to believe. "We don't have a home anymore. No matter how many places we'd tried to live in. We're misplaced."

Bucky's smiles fades and but he doesn't turn from Steve. Instead, he leans over and down to kiss his shoulder. Brushes his lips over the heated skin. Pale and bare. Too clear. Too soft. Too vulnerable. Not a soldiers skin. Aside from the heat and the burning echo of the war. There's always fire in Steve now. He's turned from ice to ashes. From ice to dirt. From ice to smoke.

"You don't even know how much I want you, do you?" Buck asks. His lips not far from Steve's skin. It hurts. It hurts because wanting can never be quiet. Wanting can never be postponed. Because wanting can never not bite. Those who want and those that are wanted. That have to fight the bite or surrender to it. It hurts because Steve is torn, wanting to fight and surrender all at once. And it stings.

Does Steve know? Could he have known? From the way he had held him behind the gas station. The way Bucky had held his mouth in place in between his thighs. From the way he had kissed Steve as he had cried. From the way he had pushed his own body against Steve's in the dirt. With Sharon watching them.

Steve shrugs. He should know. Although the admission runs through him like electricity, runs through him much calmer than his panic but no less reviving, he doesn't allow to trust it yet. More punishment. He feels the words in his kneecaps though. In the twitching parts of his body. In his toes that are so tired of running. Tired of the yearning for home. Of the endless march. He feels the words in the pit of his stomach and below his navel. In all the right places. The ones that make you feel alive after you've doubted your own heartbeat. The places that long for friendly touch. Bucky's touch. Metal touch. It makes Steve feel entirely human for just one moment.

"Despite everything?" Steve asks. A different answer to what he's done. A different kind of forgiveness. "Even though how I want you is fucked up? Even though how I want you isn't all that different from how I want the soldier?"

He wanted the soldier now. Part of him wanted to fight him again. Only to feel his body in ways that were forbidden for him now. And he longed for the exhaustion after the battle. For the sense of peace that only chaos can bring. He longed for noise after the silence of the run. He longed for the soldier's escalation. The soldier's eagerness to finish things.

"Everything you want ends up hurting you," Buck admits. "Can't blame me for being scared. "It's-," he pauses, thinks, but then lets his head fall back, "it's scary, Steve. Makes me shit my pants."

The confession catches Steve off guard. He didn't think of himself as scary. Or threatening. Not even as doing something threatening. Sure, he had strength and the shield and he was after the bad guys. But that wasn't what Bucky meant. Bucky was talking of things before the war. And after he dropped the shield. Captain America wasn't scary to Bucky. Steve was.

"Should we stop talking?” Steve asks. He wanted to be alone with his threatening self. Let it make himself afraid for once.

He knows Bucky's right. He knows but he doesn't want to acknowledge that he's been relentless in his pursuit of things that were both dangerous and right. Or dangerous and wrong. Relentless in what he thought was right. Or the only way. Or a necessity. In that, wanting the soldier, loving the soldier, was very much in line with his self.

Feeling as if there was nothing else left to do, he looks Bucky straight in the eye, daring him to say 'no'. Daring him to say 'yes'. Daring him to remain quiet.

"Admit it," Bucky just says. "Admit that the lightweight punk in you is beyond pleased with your choices. Pleased with where we are now."

"Really?" Steve asks. Part of him enjoys Bucky's lighter tone to no end. It's drowning out the part that is still wincing over every evidence that Bucky is getting better as Steve continues to get worse. "You think this is the right time to make fun of me?"

"Well, someone has to." Bucky shrugs. He leans in for a kiss, leans in and goes straight for Steve's lips. Kissing Steve's not scary to him. In fact, he doesn't seem to be able to keep his cheeks from going for a grin, so Steve can feel the shadow of Buck's teeth.

Someone has to, Steve echoes in his head. It's true. Someone always has to step up. And maybe that was just what Buck was doing. Seeing as Steve was losing it, forced him to keep his own shit at bay. As it had been the other way around before.  

When Bucky pulls back, Steve wants to dive in head first again. Into another kiss. The end of the conversation. The start of another chapter. Though he's out of ideas. Of sentences and words. Of coping strategies. No way to get them back on track. No way to overcome what has already taken hold of them. No way to escape with everyone coming for them.

Only way out is through, he tells himself. Only way out is through. They just gotta keep going. With the tides and the moments. The opportunities. With the doors that open and close. They'll end up somewhere. Somewhere safe. Somewhere safe with only Steve for a threat.

They shouldn't be together. Steve knows. Somewhere inside his head he knows that they shouldn't. Not now. Eventually, yes. Somewhere down the line. When coping isn't just a hollow concept. When they're filled with a life again and not just and empty road ahead.

But you can't delay love. And you shouldn't. The one thing Steve's learned from the past. You should never delay love. Even if it would have been better later. Even if it would have lasted later. Even if it wouldn't have hurt later. If you can delay love, you're not in love at all.

"Let me, please," Steve breathes. An echo of Bucky asking him not to say no. Just a different way to plead not to be denied. Not to deny either of them. He curves his spine, moves his skin closer to Bucky's. His open lips just another plea. Let me. Let me so I can breathe again.

"Steve," Buck says quietly. His voice is heavy. This time 'Steve' is a 'no'. Like all the other times since the night of his dream. Since the longing. The longing. Since longing, rusted, seventeen.

It makes Steve feel stupid. It makes him feel stupid for wanting Bucky at all. For wanting Bucky between his lips. The evidence of Buck wanting him back running down his throat.

"Would you let me," he asks, because his stupidity doesn't protect him from further humiliation. Or self harm. "Would you let me if I took you back tomorrow?" Steve wonders, sounding just like the broken man he feels inside the body of the hero. Under the smooth skin and the functioning bones. And suddenly the longing for the arm becomes insufferable.

"Are you?" Bucky just asks. He's probably fed up with him. Fed up with his desperation. Hoping that Steve's not bluffing. Hoping for them to find them. And take him. And leave Steve behind. "Taking me back tomorrow?"

Steve doesn't even know where 'back' is. There's no back home. There's back to Sam, if he thinks about it. Maybe back to Natasha. If Natasha was still around. There was no back to Sharon. Not in that sense. Steve doesn't know if anyone would even want them back. Who would want him back after this mess. And even then how was he going to explain what had happened. Not just the deaths. The fights. The arm. And their minds. And what their bodies did to each other. Where do you begin to explain, to your friends, to the woman you kissed before you left, that there was nothing else doing it for you now. Nothing else than the guy you missed for eighty years. And you on your knees for him.

Maybe there was no going back because Steve didn't want to be anywhere else at all.

Maybe he didn't want anyone back.

Anyone else.

"Is it going to end?" Steve wonders. He tries to imagine it. Paint a nice little picture. Bucky leaving him. Maybe he'll say goodbye. Maybe he'll leave in the middle of the night. He doesn't even have to say anything. Steve will apologize. To Sam. To Natasha. To Sharon. Maybe she'll ask him out. And they go to that place she likes so much. Maybe he'll dress up nicely. Wear his uniform.

But it's not the forties anymore.

Maybe he'll wear a tie.

And he'd pretend there was a back-to-Sharon after all.  

"It'll end when it ends," Buck just tells him. Meaning whatever it means. Meaning it'll end.

Yeah. Sounds about right.

"If you'll never let me again, let me now," Steve pleads but his voice hides the urgency. "What difference does it make?" he asks, sounding like an asshole. Even to himself.

"I've let people for too long," Bucky says. Implications heavy. Though Steve knows he'd never just let anyone the way he let Steve. Tells himself that it's different. It has to be different. Is it different?

"It made the arm come to life again," Steve whispers in his own desperation. Whispers to himself. What a shitty argument. But it's out before he can stop himself. He wants all the parts of Bucky come to life again. All the parts of himself. "You want me." Another awful addition to the shitty argument he made before. Another bad decision. "You wanted me."

"Different from this," Buck answers although Steve didn't really ask anything. Didn't really want him to answer. To turn him down like this. Deny him. Deny him when Steve would never deny him. He wanted to argue with himself instead. He wanted to reject himself. Out loud just by accident.  

"Like you wanted me behind the gas station?" Steve asks still, because maybe he does want Bucky's rejection as well. The punishing part of himself wants for Bucky to answer. Wants for Steve to think about it. Wants Bucky to think about it. To be hurt about it maybe. Reject even past decisions. Past wants. The past as a whole.

"And if?" Buck asks, making Steve turn his head. Face him again. Not the thing he expected. Was one really different from the other? "Would you let me again?" Buck wonders.

"Always," Steve just says. Because it's true. He wouldn't ever find himself saying 'no' to Bucky.

"That's fucked up," Buck says again but Steve only shrugs. They've established that.

He doesn't care anymore.

If he ever cared in the first place.

Nothing new about being fucked up and wanting what's fucked up. And then Steve turns his back to Bucky and closes his eyes. Shuts everything out. He's tired of listening what's between the lines. Tired of talking and leaving out blanks. Things that he cannot find words for. Things that make him worry and will scare Bucky even more. Part of him hopes to feel Buck's hands on him a few seconds later. Wishes for the burning touch. Wishing for the metal fingers to leave a cooling trail. Steve hopes for curious fingers wandering down his spine and his back. Seeking to reconnect. He wishes for them to slip past his waistband. Past the curve of his cheeks, nudging against his rim.

He hopes for the soldier to take over. For Bucky to forget. Forget to worry. Hopes for the asset's urges to take over. And Steve would lie there and take it. He'd be what the asset needs. He'd lie there and store every touch in his memory. Lock it away for later. For when Bucky's left him. He'd lie there and give the soldier what Bucky was never going to ask for again. What Bucky is keeping from him. He'd lie there and take it just like the soldier was used to.

But nothing happens.

His back remains untouched.

"You don't get it do you?" Buck asks.

Steve doesn't know what he means. What he's supposed to 'get'. So he shrugs again. Retreating deeper into his fantasy. Wondering where it all went wrong. If there was a chance that one day Bucky would want to try again. Because Steve would still let him if another century passed. If Bucky would ever return to him. After years of silence.

But Bucky keeps talking. And his voice softens.

"I don't want to hurt you." A tender hand on Steve's hip. Almost there. Just resting. Reassuring. A gesture Steve knows all to well. Not trying to turn him around. Then a gentle kiss on his shoulder. "I want to be good for you," Buck says and hidden from his eyes, Steve frowns. Confused. He wasn't anything but gold to Steve. "I get that it doesn't make a difference to you," Buck goes on, his lips so close to Steve's skin. He wants to lean in, but knows that Bucky wasn't finished yet. "Look at us, Steve. I know this isn't me. And I know this isn't you. You're good, Steve. You're not a criminal. And I wish I wasn't either."

Steve shakes his head. Slowly, but only because he's paralyzed by anger. Shakes his head again. Shakes his shoulders.

Wants to shake it all off.

Part of him was proud. The lanky punk from Brooklyn was proud.

And how dare Bucky Barnes deny him his revolution.

"I look at us now, I look at you," Bucky goes on nonetheless. Does he get it? Probably better than Steve. "I see my past. And I see your past. And I wish we were unchanged." It makes Steve nervous listening to him. Listening to Bucky while the hand on his hip bone distracts him. The palm that has never felt so soft before. So vulnerable in return that Steve wondered if he was feeling only his own skin. The sense of reflection itched him. Maddened him. He wanted to reach back and feel for himself. With his own hand. Yet still scared that his fingers would suffer from the same manipulation. And could only feel their own touch in the lines of Bucky's hand. "I want us to be unchanged. I wish we could live there, you know. In the past. It's stupid, but I wish we could live there."

No, Steve thinks. Not stupid at all. It's the only thing making sense.

"I want us to be innocent still, Steve. You get that right?" Buck asks. "I don't enjoy who we've become. Don't like it. Don't like that we ended up here. That it's because of me. Because of what I've done."

Steve shuts is eyes tight. Shouldn't he want that too? For them to have a second chance? A second life? For them to get rid of their ghosts. Wash them off of the skin. Rinse them out from between the hair. From underneath the finger nails. How can it be too much to ask to be reborn?

"You didn't cause this," Steve tries, although he knows Bucky doesn't want to hear it. Or maybe it's the only thing he wants to hear. The only thing he needs to hear and the only thing Steve needs to say. "We got caught up," he adds. Speaks his words into the shabby darkness. Is Bucky still listening? "Like all soldiers, we got caught up in politics."

Like all soldiers, they got caught up in politics.

Soldiers. Not superhero billionaires.

Steve can feel Bucky's breath on the skin of his shoulder. Not a sigh. Not a huff. Frustration maybe. Exasperation. Steve's tired of it too. But it's still comforting. It's the comfort only a loved one can give. Knowing they breathe. Knowing they live. For a moment Steve allows himself to fall into that comfort. Let it surround him. Both of them.

There's no solution to where they ended up. There is no way to retrieve the innocence from the bottom of their souls. And if even if they'd find themselves a hundred years in the past, they'd still find the scars of battles. And the pain of everyday life. And an open wound from where the heart broke. Because love wasn't love back then.

And what chance did love stand against circumstances anyway. They loved each other now, didn't they? Wanted each other now. And yet couldn't find a way towards the other. Couldn't find a way to close that gap. To break that barrier. Whatever it was. Bucky had literally been inside Steve. In more ways than one. And yet they hadn't been together as normal people would. Normal people.

Steve wants to let himself fall into the comfort of surrender as well. Wants the relief of it to surround him.

Had they ever been normal people? Maybe Bucky had been, Steve thinks. Maybe he came close to it. Maybe Bucky had had a chance at normalcy. If it hadn't been for the war. Steve only had had a chance of death. And war gave him life. The military gave him. The serum gave him life. The one thing waiting for them if they'd turn back time was death. Steve dying from a fever in Brooklyn. Bucky dying on the other side of the word in war. Turning back time wasn't an option. And Steve had to convince Bucky that it wasn't. They had to find the life they were given now. Find it in the days ahead.

"You only want me when I'm good?" Steve asks, wondering and thinking back why --if he had really been as good a man everyone liked to say back then--  why Bucky hadn't had wanted him before. Starts wondering if the serum had changed his mind. Steve tilts his head by an inch. He wants Bucky to speak his truth. And he doesn't want to miss one word of it. "You only want me when I carry the shield? Even though you said that never mattered to you? Even though the costume never made a difference to you? Even though Steve Rogers was who you marched with and not Captain America?"

This time, Bucky does try to turn him by his shoulder. But only halfheartedly. With a weakness that must have cost him a lot of strength. And he lets Steve go when he doesn't budge immediately. "You can't let this change you," Buck avoids the original question. But Steve's already changed.

"Good is what you do, not how you are," Steve reminds him. Reminds both of them. Speaks it back in time. Something he should have said when Erskine picked him in the first place. For his experiment. "And now I'm doing what's right." He reaches back, suddenly unsure if Bucky had retreated from him. Unsure whether or not he was still within reach. The heat of the room blurs with the heat of Buck's body. No chance to tell the difference. The proximity, the intimacy, the habit - it fades under the words that take them further apart.

But Bucky's right there when Steve reaches for him. Fingers brushing over his thigh. Gently. Lovingly. None of it had faded at all.

Steve breathes in relief.

"Doing right by you," he whispers then. "And by me."

Bucky meets Steve's touch with his own, his palm like a promise on the back of Steve's hand. To the end of the line. To the end of the line and don't doubt me on this. Don't doubt me a single time. Another kiss atop of his shoulder. Where the burden rests. "Come on, Steve," Buck says. A tender tone. Just a pair of tender hearts under roughed up uniforms. "Come on, turn 'round."

This time when Bucky tries to move him, Steve lets himself be turned on his back. Lets himself be lead back into Buck's arms. To even say he goes pliantly would be wrong beyond words. He goes willingly. And wantingly. Wantonly. The only way home he's ever known.

And then finds himself looking up into the eyes of the soldier. The eyes of the asset. The saddest eyes Steve had ever seen.

And it pains him to keep looking.

But the thought of looking away pains him more.

"I want to be good for you, too," he says, so quiet. His voice hiding in the dark. "I do want you to be my handler." Words that should have never been spoken out loud. "I want to be yours," he adds. His cheeks slowly start to feel warm again. "I want to be your asset." Yours, Steve thinks. Yours, not S.H.I.E.L.D.'s. Not Fury's. Not Tony's and the Avengers'. Not even America's. "I want you to do to me what they did to you." Steve tries to hide his face, tries to hide from Bucky's gaze. He knows what he's said. Those ugly words. How could he even think them. Speak them. Let them be heard.

Let alone fantasize about the whole thing.

Or even allude that it could ever be one and the same.

There's no hiding now. There's no taking it back. No calling the words back into his mouth. Shove them past his tongue.

And when Steve tries to drape his arm over his eyes, Bucky's metal hand snaps and pushes it back down forcefully. "You don't want that," he insists, but there are already tears in Steve's eyes screaming the opposite. Proving the opposite.

"You want me to hurt you, Steve?" Buck asks then, metal fingers closing painfully around Steve's elbow. "You want me to punish you even though you have no idea what for?"

Steve nods.

Losing his breath with his nose clogged from the tears that keep coming.

Yes, I want you to hurt me.

"You want me to treat you like a fucking thing?" Bucky goes on, grimacing cruelly over Steve's tears.  

But Steve nods. Twists his body closer to Bucky's. He wants more of his skin. More of his warmth. More of them. From a hundred years ago.

Yes, I want you to treat me like that.

It should hurt more to admit to it. Should be hurting him everywhere. Hurting him, because how can he do this to Bucky? Betray him like that? In the back of his head, admitting to all the wrong things.

"You want me to use you, Steve?" Buck keeps going. His tone changes with every question. Grows darker. Angry. Because of how fucked up Steve is. Because of how he dared to even spell it out. Ask Bucky to go back there.

"You don't want that," Bucky says again. It doesn't sound the same at all. As he speaks he twists Steve's arm and continues to bend it back. Holds it down above Steve's head long moments after, shaking his head slowly. Waiting for Steve to mirror him.

Steve stares. Stares into angry eyes and then does exactly that. Moving his head with Bucky's movements. Shaking his head no, but continues to plead with his gaze. And his trembling lips. Keeps on pleading through the silence between them.

"No, you don't want that," Buck repeats, shattering it. He runs his free hand through Steve's hair. Somewhat rough and sticky. Different. It almost hurts. It almost feels good. It's almost there. "That's fucked up, Steve."

Yes. It's fucked up, Steve. And maybe he shouldn't have said what he said. Shouldn't have said anything. He should have fucking gone to sleep.

"You wanna be good?" Bucky asks, coaxing another hesitant nod out of Steve's body. Steve has no idea where the questions come from. The soldier doesn't ask many questions. Not before he remembered. "Then don't be so fucked up," Bucky tells him, tugging on Steve's hair with a strong grip. And when he goes on, he pronounces every single word with the sharpness of his knife's blade. "Stop being so fucked up."

There's a low tremor in Bucky's metal hand, making the hairs on Steve's arm stand. Eager for more sensations, Steve tilts his head back just enough to catch Buck's breath beneath his jaw. Lines up his crotch with Bucky's thigh, waiting for the muscle to give him some friction. But Bucky remains still aside from the trembling metal. He watches Steve with angry eyes. Just angry enough to hide the dash of disgust underneath the rage.

Steve doesn't look away.

He deserves it. He's okay with Bucky thinking he deserves it. He's okay with Bucky being the one being disgusted by him. He's okay with Bucky being the one disappointed in him. It's different when it's Bucky. It's temporary when it's Bucky. It's laced with the taste of forgiveness. Somewhere under a layer of shame. Under a layer of humiliation.

If Bucky is angry at him he'll take it. He'll trust his reason. He'll never fight him. Not again Not in the way he fought all the others. He'll let Bucky choose when to end it. How to end it.

Slowly, Bucky ducks his head down. Fury eyes, harsh and cold. Gaze ghosting over Steve's face. Taking in every change of expression. But Steve doesn't flinch. Doesn't move. Doesn't retreat.

Bucky hesitates just before their lips touch, pulls back just enough to glance over the curve of Steve's cupids bow, the soft skin of his bottom lip, mouth open just enough for Bucky to dip in the tip of his thumb. The drag of rough skin just until Steve's wet tongue behind a barrier of teeth that Bucky tames as he pushes in further, past the first knuckle. The taste of salt. Of skin so familiar, it's enough to force a low moan out of Steve. Enough to make him hold still despite the urge to roll his hips.

With the pad of his finger Bucky presses down on Steve's tongue, testing his resistance. Not the first time. But one of the rarer times he gives Steve's a finger of his right hand. More often it had been the weight of metal on his tongue. If it hadn't been the weight of Bucky's cock.

There's no resistance in any part of Steve's body. Not when it's Bucky. He's pliant and welcoming, always eager to make room for him. Eager to accompany Buck's stance. His insistence. His pace. His needs.

Objectively, it might not be the best sensation, having someone else feel along the lines of your tongue only to seek out the most pliant spots of your cheeks. Steve imagines the asset in his place. Letting HYDRA agents do what they have to do. Steve doesn't blink. Doesn't fight. Instead he calms. His heart rate drops. He knows. Because to him, it is the best sensation. Having Bucky back on his tongue. Any part of Bucky.

Steve feels the change in every muscle and every vein. In every breath, every swallow he has to hold off.

He can't tell whether or not Bucky notices the shifting mood. The shift in Steve's body. That grows into stillness. Blossoms even into tranquility. He's not risking losing what he yearned for way too long. He's not even trying to touch himself, remembering too vividly how it always went. Bucky first and Steve later. Steve only after Bucky.

And although he knows, although he keeps to himself, refuses to acknowledge his body at all, his body didn't fail to notice the intrusion. Notice the taste of Bucky's skin.

Instead, the relief of having Bucky interested in his mouth again runs through Steve like the serum. Insistent. Altering his natural state. Elevating him. A different kind of change.

He breathes through his nose, flat breaths and chest barely rising. He'll pant later if he's lucky. He'll choke later if he's lucky.

Bucky swaps his thumb for pointer and middle finger, smearing saliva along the underside of Steve's jaw as he slides them past his lips.

Despite his instinct to close them around Bucky's fingers, Steve keeps his lips slack and yielding. Keeps his tongue flat for Bucky's fingertips to stroke.

While Steve's body relaxes, Bucky's body starts working. His breaths come more harshly and his gaze sharpens. Lines of concentration below a frown of fascination.

He wets his own lips as he stares at Steve's. Watches his fingers move slowly. In and out. In their quest for wet heat.

Steve lets his eyes fall shut. He'd love nothing more than to watch Bucky watch him. But he knows the soldier doesn't like being stared at. No soldier likes being stared at. Not even the soldier in Steve likes to be watched. It means trouble.

It's better for both of them to have a couple of seconds to themselves.

To gather some courage.

Without much warning, Bucky adds a third finger. Steve doesn't mind. Doesn't mind at all. Shivers at the stretch in the corner of his lips.

The space around him disappears. The old blanket, the stale air. The dust and the dirt and the cracks on the walls. There's Bucky and only Bucky. His skin against Steve's body. Metal against Steve's wrists. The tremor within that fades. That fades with Steve growing calm, fades with rediscovered purpose.

You're my mission, Steve recalls behind closed eyes. I'm your mission. Nothing has ever felt more true. More sincere.

If all he was was Buck's mission, he wouldn't have fought it either. If all he was defined by was defined along the lines of Bucky's self, he wouldn't fight it. He doesn't mind only being one with the other. As long as the other is Bucky. And yet he'd fight nail and tooth if anyone ever dared to assume there was no Bucky without Steve. No Winter Soldier without Captain America.

He wonders if Bucky thought that fucked up as well.

When Buck's fingers press alongside Steve's teeth to dig into the soft dip under his tongue, Steve feels the straining fabric of his pants stretching over the head of his hard cock.

Buck makes good use of his mouth, wets his fingers all around, tests Steve's compliance deep into the back of his throat.

And Steve lets him.

Lets him, knowing that Bucky knows he wants it all the same. Wants it more.

The metal arm holds him in place although Steve wouldn't dare to move. It's how it's always been though. And Steve wouldn't mind if Buck went for his throat instead his wrist later.

"I know what you want, Steve," Buck starts, voice rasp and roughed up. He withdraws his fingers as he speaks which, rather than just the sound of his voice, tears Steve from his wandering thoughts.

Bucky's gaze is still focused on Steve's lips though, he doesn't even meet Steve's eyes when he blinks them open.

Before Steve can consciously register the movement, Buck tugs on his waistband with a last dry finger and slips the rest of his hand past it.

Steve can't tell whether his legs automatically fall open to give Buck more access or if Bucky had nudged his thighs apart with a tap of his knuckles. Maybe both had happened simultaneously.

None of it matters when Buck presses a wet tip against his rim, calm but relentless, pushes in until he's way past the second knuckle. Steve didn't have a chance to think, to command to his muscle to budge or to tighten, and when he does clench out of reflex it's already around the widest part of Bucky's lone finger.

He groans at the intrusion, the precision of Bucky's insertion and the sensation of slow adjustment. It's a small stretch but it took Steve by surprise, his body catching on only moments later.

As soon as his body relaxes, Buck moves his finger back and forth and then pulls out to rush and push a second one in alongside the other as long as it's still wet.

"You want me to fuck you with the metal hand again," Buck says, causing Steve to turn his head and shut his eyes tight. It's one thing among the ones Steve wants. Not the same as wanting Buck's cock between his lips. Not the same as a metal finger on his tongue. A metal finger or two.

But still his third choice tonight.

The second finger doesn't go as easy as the first, but Steve knows Buck didn't wet three fingers for nothing. So he doesn't squirm. Doesn't tense. Doesn't hold his breath.

The stretch burns, but Steve's entire skin feels on fire anyway. He can only imagine the heat Bucky's finger must encounter upon breaching his body.

"Come on, Steve," Buck says but it's his way of telling Steve how little time there is for him to get ready for more. He's not going to loosen him more than those couple of twists and turns. And he's not going to wait for Steve to ask for another.

One more time in, then out, and before Steve can brace himself, the third's already past his rim. Buck goes slow then. Torturously slow. And then stills entirely.

Gives both of them time to adjust. Blood pulsing between them. Heavy and fierly in Steve's cock and circling the stretched muscle of his rim.

Steve swallows and only then realizes that somewhere in between Bucky's fingering he’s started to breathe through his mouth. Throat dry and hurting. And painfully empty.

In a gesture that Steve fails to fully comprehend, Buck’s metal hand slips from his wrist to the palm of Steve's hand. Wordlessly asking for their fingers to intertwine.

Steve yields.

Maybe he'd prefer the hand somewhere else, but Bucky needs comfort just as much as Steve and he wasn't going to deny him.

The touch takes him weeks back. To when he was only allowed to touch the metal hand when it was covered by leather gloves. A layer between them that they since have shed. The memory makes Steve tighten his grip. Makes him relish and the simple act of holding hands once more.

Steve's back hurts from the slight hollow curl to allow Buck to reach him more easily. Reach his hole without a straining stretch of the human arm.

Bucky's own blood pulses just past the head of Steve's cock through his wrist. The inner skin of Buck's forearm catching drops of precome, wiping them off like tears.

Steve chest tightens at every contact, but he holds out a whine. Holds out the instinct to seek more friction. To chase the feeling. Fulfill the urge to reach satisfaction as fast and as rough as possible.

Buck presses his hand against Steve's rim, penetration deepening only in intensity.

There's sweat on Steve's chest and above his upper lip. It's almost as if he can smell the salt in every breath.

He's thankful that Buck doesn't try to keep fucking him with his fingers. With no lube at hand and his own dried spit it would cause more discomfort than pleasure. Not the good kind of pain.

And yet, Steve meets the press of his hand with a thrust of his own. Canting his hips for just that little bit of extra stretch. Of deeper touch.

“There should be lube when it's the left though,” Buck says. His words both arouse Steve and hit him where it hurts most. Yes, he wants the metal fingers. Yes, there should be lube when it's the metal plates. There should be lube to mend the ever changing patterns of Buck's movements. There should be lube in case there's trembling. There should be lube for the rough edges that Buck can't control.

And yet it touches Steve deep in the pit of his stomach and the center of his chest that Bucky worries. That Bucky worries and plans. That Bucky has things he wants to do to Steve. That Bucky wants to give to Steve. And give to him safely.

Who would have known.

Who would have known between Steve's angry dreams. And his own quest for punishment. Who would have known that Steve was moved by being safeguarded. And looked after.

Not Steve.

Because he has to bite back another row of tears. Tears he didn't expect. Not with Buck and three of his fingers buried in Steve's ass. And the prospect of being spread over metal fingers.

Fuck those tears.

“Did you know that you're all soft inside?” Buck asks. Tone and voice so familiar that they don't count for and interruption. So familiar that they compliment the silence. Compliment the breaths and the quiet noises that slip past Steve's lips.

“One thing the serum didn't take from you,” he adds.

But there's so much more that the serum didn't take. Steve's love for Buck. And his courage. And that part of him that stubbornly refused to be told what to do.

That part that hadn't known back then how good it felt to be told what to do. If it was Bucky's voice. Bucky's wishes.

“And no one else knows,” Buck goes on and Steve wonders if it's the words that keep him calm. If they should have talked more the first time they'd tried. “No one else knows.”

No, Steve thinks. No one else knows.

“I want it to be just me,” Bucky says, admitting to his own obsession. His own jealousy.

Maybe it won't end after all.

Steve’s throat still feels dry and he gambles a little looking for his voice, but he can't stop himself. “You'd be stupid to think I wouldn't want the same,” he says, even tries to catch Buck's gaze.

It's just a glance but Buck meets his eyes. A look now. On top of words. And a gentle squeeze of the metal hand.

Steve's not going anywhere. And if they're not coming to take Buck then Buck's not going anywhere either.

“Don't pull out,” Steve whispers. An afterthought. He wants to keep Bucky for as long as he can.

“You can't have it both, Steve,” Buck says. “Can't have my fingers up your ass and your mouth on my cock.”

Steve swallows. Wets his lips. Parts them. He knows what he wants. Buck knows it too.

“Say it,” Buck offers. Not commanding him yet. “Want me to pull out or not?”

This time Steve whines openly and thrust his hips once more to feel Buck inside him.

“Let me,” Steve tries. It's not the answer Bucky had asked for  “Please let me.”

“Come on then,” Buck says, coaxing, but then he's already starting to ease his fingers back. Leave Steve hollowed out and empty. Who still needs to find the right answer.

Bucky circles his loosened rim a couple of times with tender fingers. Drags his knuckle over the sore skin.

“Come on then,” he says again and lets himself roll onto his back. Metal hand slipping from Steve's grip.

Steve scrambles. Body torn. His cock hard and stiff from arousal and anticipation. His hole feeling open and slack. His heart beating and his lips shaking. Tongue wet and throat swallowing to keep him from dripping. Cock leaking in place of his mouth. He settles his knees between Buck's feet and nose pressed against his clothed crotch. He laps at the skin like a dog as soon as Buck starts pushing the waistband of his boxers down. Laps at the dark hair.

Buck's still soft, but Steve hadn't expected anything else. He wouldn't go as far as to make note of a preference, but he like the feeling of Buck growing between his lips, fattening on his tongue. It made him feel the swell and the pressure. The subtle rise in temperature under the skin. Made him feel proud. And pleased.

He liked the sensation of being filled. Of space running out. In his mouth. He liked having more time. To taste. To make out the texture of the skin with his tongue.

The moment he gets to take Buck in, he falls apart. Weeping with trembling lips he closes around Buck's cock. Tears everywhere. Behind his lids and caught in his lashes. Running down his cheeks. Smearing over the reddened skin. Dropping down on the hollow curve between Bucky's hipbone and the base of his cock. The base that still yields with Steve's movements. Shoving his head against Buck's pelvis impatiently. Feeling drunk on it. Feeling high from it. Helplessly, Steve braces himself on Buck's thigh. Helplessly he reaches out. Reaches out for the metal arm. Buck holds his hand. Strokes his hair with the other.

As the base swells, it grows sturdy. Giving Steve a steady anchor. Giving focus to the work of his tongue.

Careful as to not hurt Bucky with a careless jerk of his chin that rests dangerously close to the vulnerable sack, Steve tries to slow his efforts down. He knows that once Bucky feels like chasing his own climax, he'll take matters into his own hands. Take Steve's cheekbones into his own hands. Maybe a thumb under his jaw. He'll make it good, when he wants past that edge. The soldier will fuck his throat. Effortless. Effectively. And with precision.

This, this now, this is for Steve. This is Steve's. This was for reveling in the sensation of the swallowing nothing and everything. The sensation of skin on skin, of wetness and heat. Of tightening and loosening around Buck's sensitive spots. Of pliancy behind stubborn teeth, of softness around hardened need.

This was Steve giving Buck. Pleasing Buck. Serving Buck. This was Steve giving to Bucky before the soldier would take from Steve. And he'll let him. He'll let him happily. Delightedly. Fucking blissfully.

He presses his tongue against the underside of Buck's cock. Measuring its length. It's weight. Guiding it further down his throat. As deep as it would go. Firm and tender alike, soothing the sore skin. Steve's throat closing around it.

The cough forces its way past Buck's cock when the metal hand pushes Steve down by his neck. Pushes him down that last inch he had saved for leverage. Then all air is gone and the soldier replaces it with punches of his thrusting hips. And Steve hands himself over.

Finish it, he thinks. Then finish it.

Bucky pulls back with a precise sense of Steve's despair. His reflexes. The survival instinct that he despises so much. Gives Steve moments to gasp for air. To recover from the pressure. From the suffocating force.

And yet it's Steve who dives back in first. Eager to choke around the cock he worships beyond sanity.

Bucky uses him in the most rewarding way. Treats Steve's mouth as if it was the best hole. The best sleeve. The only fitting thing for the asset. Steve promised to be the only one. Longs to be the only one. Wouldn't have it any other way. He's Bucky's missing piece. All he's ever asked to be since the soldier lost his mask. 

Steve craves the bitter taste like it was the only thing that could nurture him. As if he had been starved. And he had been starved. 

There's no warning. There's only the telling signs of Bucky's body that Steve had learned to read. 

It gives him time to cherish those last thrusts. The tightening body that had he belonged to now. The asset's asset. Steve was good at it too. 

Bucky tastes rough, not like he used to when they did this every night. Tastes like the soldier after a long mission. Like fights and exhaustion. His body forcing out what it had kept to itself for too long. 

Steve drinks it up like a gift. It's for him. For him only. 

He swallows it down and has to hold onto Bucky with a painful grip to keep himself from coming. It's not his time. Bucky first, then Steve. And Bucky's not quite done yet. He waits until the last drop is spent in Steve's mouth. Lets Steve use his tongue just to make sure. Lets Steve make sure of it far longer than necessary. And even then holds Steve's head in place. Lets his cock soften between Steve's lips. Lets Steve hold it there for his own peace of mind. 

“Don't pull off,” Buck tells him softly. Mirroring Steve's own words. As if Steve wouldn't have let Bucky make the choice anyway. "Not yet." 

Steve doesn't. He lets Buck's cock rest on his tongue, holding still so he wouldn't turn the lingering afterglow into stinging over-stimulation. He takes a deep breath through his nose, calms his own heart. His own nerves. Hand twitching to get himself some relief. 

"Just a while longer," Bucky adds. He runs his fingers over the back of Steve's neck. Over and over again. Helping him to calm down. "Just a while longer and you can come over my chest." 

Steve closes his eyes over the thoughts. Lets his fantasy go ahead.

He'll follow.

He'll follow in a little while.   
  
When Bucky finally lets him, he watches him the entire time. From the moment the calming caress of his fingers on Steve necks falters, to the little nudge against Steve's ear, and as he cradles Steve's jaw in his palms, feeling for the moment Steve opens up to let him go. Watches Steve fail to support his weight on shaky elbows for a second there, watching Steve crawl towards him with flushed cheeked and sweaty hair. The traces of Bucky's relief only faintly in his panting breath. 

Buck watches Steve sit back on his heels, chest straight and shoulders wide. Watches the way Steve's hands shake as he finally takes his own cock in one hand. Lets the other get a gentle hold of his balls, touching himself with the same pleasure, the same attitude of selfless service that had ruled every touch he had offered to Bucky earlier. He grows under Buck's gaze, grows taller without the serum. Stance strong and secure. No science needed.  

For the first time in his life he worships himself like he worships Bucky. Worships the most fragile parts of himself. And the most defiant. 

Steve lets his own glances wander. From Buck's eyes, to his lips. To Buck's neck. And the naked chest that he offered to Steve. To the scars. And the metal. Back to Bucky's nipple and down to his navel. Allows himself a glance to his own cock. Hard and aching in his fist. Then he meets Bucky's gaze unafraid.

Only a couple of strokes. Only a light squeeze. Only a moment to recall the images and the taste from before. And then Steve spills himself on Buck's chest. Shaking and panting roughly through the sore throat. He stares at the drops of come. At the pooling mess. Stares as they run down towards the center of Bucky's sternum. 

Somewhat proud. Somewhat loved. 

But it all pales the moment Bucky runs his metal fingers through the evidence of Steve's relief. The moment he coats the metal palm with Steve's release. And then turns it. Offering it to Steve in perfect silence. 

To Steve, who latches onto the metal with an unknown thirst. An unknown hunger deep in the pit of his stomach. He laps along the lines of the plates in long strokes, licks and sucks on each finger until the bitter salt tastes like rust, and keeps licking until the rust tastes like metal. Until the metal tastes only like Steve. 

He doesn't know if there were more tears. He remembers only the taste. 

When there's none left on Buck's hand, Steve cleans his chest as well. Slowly and gently. His nose ghosting over the skin, breathing in the scent of sex and Bucky. Of sweat and Bucky. Of Steve and Bucky. Of hope and Bucky.

Of Bucky.    


* * *

  
It's days later and this time Steve knows immediately that they've been found. 

This time he doesn't fail Bucky the way he's failed him with Sharon. 

This time he jolts awake and tells Bucky to run. Doesn't hesitate to push him away from his own body. 

Walks out with bare feet, knowing they'll shoot him at first sight. 

He's on autopilot, numb and his brain all fogged. 

He'll die, but he'll make his peace with it knowing that Bucky will live.

The sun's not out yet, but the sky's painted deep blue. Almost too easy to make out his shape. 

There's no bullet. No HYDRA agents in all black. 

There's more blue. And then, for a split second, metallic red and yellow and the shape of an old friend. 

And then Bucky pulls him back by his shirt, metal hand gripping him so hard that it rips. 

"Go," Steve shouts, eyes wide 'cause he didn't see that coming. He didn't plan for Bucky to return. He didn't plan to fail him again. "Go," he says again, voice breaking. "Move," he adds, but his throat's already locked and his lungs collapse over the panic that hits.

Desperately, he turns, eyes hastily searching for Tony through the blur. Through the shaking vision. And the crashing senses.   
  
He holds one hand out back, tries to keep Bucky behind his own body. Holds up the other to signal to Tony to hold back. But his heart beats too fast and his breath cramps and his ears ring and his fingers grow numb. When his knees starts to feel like they maybe give in, he uses the free hand to hold on to his crotch instead, afraid his bladder will give in to fear again.

He has to fight. If it comes to it, he'll still have to fight. 

Frozen in the humiliating posture, Steve calls out, but neither words nor air pass his mouth. 'Tony,' Steve tries to plead, but nothing. His tongue sticks to the dried up gums and his lips stick to each other.

They can't take him. They can't. They cannot take him. He won't allow it.  
  
"I'm not here to fight you, Cap." Tony's voice barely reaches Steve through the noise of his panic and the clogged senses. But then he stands ten feet from Steve and holds up both hands. Bare from the wrist down. The helmets gone too. He even takes a step back when he notices Steve's shaking shoulders. When he notices Steve's pathetic stance. "I'm just here to take you home. Both of you. Both of you free men."

* * *

It hadn't been Tony who had found them. It had been Natasha. But it was Tony who came to end this thing. Just as it had started with him. With another Stark.

Maybe Steve had failed Bucky by underestimating Natasha's persistence. Her willingness to track them down. Her willingness to track all of Bucky's handlers down. Her willingness to make an ally in the CIA. 

Maybe Bucky had failed Steve by not noticing either. Or maybe he had, Steve wasn't sure. But he never asked. 

They couldn't have run forever. 

There were still consequences. 

Steve doesn't pick up the shield again. Not for a long time. Sam does. Until Steve's ready. 

Time passes. 

Good things happen. 

Setbacks, too. 

Lots of them. 

He still doesn't know if he's a good man. If he ever was.

And he still doesn't know why it matters. 

* * *

"It was worth a try," Buck says, pulling the door shut behind them. Another empty Brooklyn apartment on the other side. 

"Next time," Steve tries.

Pretends to believe. 

Despite knowing far too well that home is a century away.

"Next time," he repeats nonetheless, holds out his hand and waits. Waits patiently while Bucky throws a wistful glance back.

"Next time," Buck echoes under his breath. Slips the metal hand in Steve's palm. 

They've come to live with it. And that's more than most people get.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm re-living 2014 by having Stucky feels ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯   
> Bear with me as I cry my way through them. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, I love you !!


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